A Gift by Starlight
by Mina Martin
Summary: Naru Osaka is Tokyo's #1 monster-bait. She can't fight back, she's not magical or powerful like Sailor Moon. Fate has decreed, she's just a normal girl and a constant victim. But something, somewhere, has changed and so will she. This time, with Nephrite bleeding to death in her arms having saved *her* instead of himself, Naru answers the voice asking: are you ready to be strong?
1. Prologue: 4 Lines, All Waiting

Prologue: Four Lines, All Waiting

Nostalgia is a strange thing. A twinge in your heart more powerful than memory alone.

People often believe it's just sentimentality, a good reminiscence. But that's only one side of the moon. The other side is melancholia.

Why else look so hard to the past, unless something was missing in the present? What do we keep trying to fix?

A long-ago era. A mother's love. A promise of romance.

Before, before, before. What is a girl that stays the same?

The memories are never perfectly preserved, anyway. The editors and filters of emotion and bias twist reality until what you remember isn't what happened at all.

That's even if you remember. How many people swear the car that almost hit them was red when it was really blue? And a bike? How many people who never went to Woodstock or faced a policeman's water cannon later claimed the counterculture for their own souls?

A crushed innocence. A parent gone forever. A bloody, beloved death.

Before, before, before. Who is a girl that changes?

But this is a more hopeful story. This is a girl's hope given power.

And so, our story begins.

* * *

_Greater Los Angeles, autumn of 1996_

Dawn Summers, 10 years old, tugged her pillow out from under her head and, turning on her side, pushed it on her other ear to block out the voices of her parents. Mom and Dad were fighting again, and it was all her big sister Buffy's fault. Who burns down their own high school at the homecoming dance? Her noise-blocking plan worked, for a little while. But she quickly got overheated and it made her neck hurt. So her Saturday morning sleep-in was ruined.

She tiptoed out of her room, slowly closing her door and then made her way down to the kitchen. Saturday morning cereal for Saturday morning cartoons. Dawn had to use a stool to open the top cabinets and reach the cereal boxes. Mom's fiber oats, yuck. Dad's corn flakes. And there – yes! Mom got it like she promised!

Dawn pulled out the sugary cereal you could only get around Halloween. But instead of Yummy Mummy or Boo Berry, or any of the other great flavors, it was Count Chocula on the front of the box.

Her Dad's voice suddenly came through loud and clear from the floor above. "I'm not paying for another round at the loony bin, they just shot her up with drugs!"

"These youth boot camps you like so much aren't the answer Hank, they're just torture dressed up in patriotism!"

Dawn shoved the box back into the cabinet, hard enough that the cardboard wrinkled under her hand. She made Eggos with the toaster instead, and then went to the family room to watch TV. Not really watching whatever sitcom was on, Dawn turned the volume up and ate before her waffles and syrup got cold. She had two refills of Eggos before she got full.

She sat cross-legged on the couch and pointed the remote at the TV. Dawn wanted cartoons. _Pinky and the Brain_,_ Batman_, _Rugrats_. Her finger pressed the button faster than the TV could change channels. So much so that when she caught a glimpse of something animated, she had to wait for the channel flipping to catch up and then carefully go back.

It wasn't a cartoon Dawn had ever seen before, but something about it was amazing. The girls had such beautiful long hair and big eyes. They talked about fighting, but unlike her sister they didn't have crusty old wooden stakes like Dawn had found under Buffy's bed – one of the characters pulled out a pretty gold locket and transformed, with sparkles and ribbons and music that made Dawn want to get up and twirl along with the girl on the screen.

Well, no one was watching. Dawn whirled around and tried to pose in place just like the magical girl did. It was harder than it looked. "I am _Sailor Moon_!" the cartoon girl declared, strong and defiant. "I stand for love and justice! I will right wrongs, and triumph over evil - and that means you!"

The screen door made a creaking sound as it slowly opened and shut. It meant Buffy was sneaking back in after sneaking out last night. Dawn dropped her arms and scooted back onto the couch. When her older sister came through the family room – the only way to get to the stairs – she froze at seeing Dawn right there.

Dawn just stared ahead at the TV. If she pretended she didn't see Buffy, Buffy could pretend right back that Dawn wasn't there either. She didn't understand why Buffy was so determined to be a teenage delinquent. Not to mention the crazy part where Buffy believed vampires were real, although she'd stopped talking about that. What was she even doing when she snuck out late at night? Going to clubs? Smoking? Doing _sex things_ with boys? The few times Dawn saw her sneak home after a night out, Buffy just looked tired. Trying to be cool must be exhausting.

On screen, a black cat and girls in color coordinated outfits scolded Sailor Moon for not being brave enough or fast enough. Hurry up, stop being a scared cry-baby, a force of destiny has just declared you a superhero, so act like one.

Buffy signed, and made her way to the stairs, probably hoping her parent's fight would continue long enough so that she could make it back to her own room undetected. She held a hand to her ribs like they ached.

"Dad wants to send you to boot camp," Dawn blurted out.

"I knew getting that camouflage skirt was a mistake. Gives people the wrong idea - too much oorah and not enough oo-la-la. And now I might have to wear the actual thing, in ugly washed out green instead of summer pastels? This is exactly why Natalie says you gotta shop the clearance bin last, so you don't get full on cheap fashion first."

"But -" Dawn started, and her sister paused on the steps.

"But Mom hates it and doesn't want to send you," Dawn said. Then, before she lost her nerve: "You'd look stupid in actual camo anyway, like Army Platoon Barbie, so it's better if you don't go."

There was a beat, and then Buffy continued up the stairs. "Can't say I want to follow in Judy Benjamin's marching steps anyway..."

Dawn went back to the cartoon. Those Sailor Scouts were much cooler than being a vampire slayer. Tuxedo Mask was kind of silly, and Sailor Moon's friend Molly had one heck of an accent. But it would be _so cool_ to have a talking cat and magical jewelry and kick monster butt. She dug out the TV guide to check when the show would be on again.

None of that actually happened to Dawn, but it's how she remembers it.

* * *

_Juuban Middle School, Late Spring 1992_

Naru Osaka hid a yawn behind her hand. At least she'd gotten to school early enough. Usagi was late as usual. That girl would never change!

"Hey, Naru," said Yumiko. "What's the scoop on Usagi's birthday party?"

"Nothing fancy, just really, really cute!" Naru had spent an afternoon at Usagi's house decorating invitations with her. It had been a while since they'd had a real sleepover, reading manga and singing along to Seiko Matsuda and Chisato Moritaka, eating pretzel sticks and daifuku past midnight. Well, mostly just Usagi eating past midnight. She would stuff her cheeks like a bunny rabbit, smiling and making a peace sign to make Naru laugh.

"She's so easy to shop for." Yumiko stretched back in her chair and gazed at the empty seat where Usagi normally sat. "If it's shiny or it has bunnies she loves you forever. I like that about Usagi. I wish my cousin was the same, she makes a _list_ of what's acceptable and it always costs me a month's allowance."

Umino Gurio's fuzzy head popped into her view. "Usagi's turning 15? Any chance I could get an invitation? It's not everyday such a cute girl hits a milestone towards becoming a woman – OW!"

He rubbed the back of his head where Naru had immediately up-slapped him. "No boys allowed!"

She sighed. Sometimes Umino could be really nice, other times he was a total dweeb, and then sometimes he was just as much an immature pervert as all the other boys in school. Nothing but a bunch of loud, obnoxious, hentai obsessed mouth breathers. She knew it was un-Japanese to think it, but with summer coming up fast most of them should use deodorant too.

Naru was already 15, but in the same grade as Usagi. That was because when she was little she had a terrible case of mononucleosis. Her mom just thought it was a very long case of the flu. By the time she was rightly diagnosed and in the hospital she'd also gotten strep throat and then rheumatic fever. It had taken months to recover, so Naru had to start school all over again.

At the time she hadn't been afraid of being sick, only of how cruel some of the nurses were to her mother. 'How could you not notice? Where was her father? So typical of a _hāfu_.' It took years to understand things like hidden symptoms and how people liked to pick scapegoats. Naru often thought it would be right for her to become a nurse herself. The next time a frightened mother came to a hospital looking to help her child, she could be comforted instead of scolded. There were classes in high school geared towards girls who wanted to go into nursing school.

Besides, her second time around in first grade was how she met Usagi. Thinking of that innocent age, so long ago, turned her unfocused gaze wistful.

"I didn't realize her birthday was coming up," said Ami, from her seat in the first row, breaking into Naru's thoughts.

Naru figured that wasn't such a big deal. After all, Ami was such a _new_ friend of Usagi's, she couldn't know everything Naru did, and she informed the blue-haired genius of the precise date - June 30.

"Oh. Did – did she send out the invitations already?"

It was rare for Ami Mizuno to sound unsure about anything. Naru would know because she had studied along with her a couple times, when Usagi and Ami weren't busy by themselves on any given week night. The genius girl was a patient tutor and a genuinely nice person.

"I don't think so," Naru reassured her. "I'm sure if it's not in the mail now she probably just forgot to send them yet. You'll see, you'll get it any day now. The glitter is unmistakable! And really hard to wash out."

They shared a smile.

A quick look at the classroom clock told Naru she still had a few minutes before lessons began, so she pulled out a special treat from her bookbag: a magazine with the latest scoop on Sailor V, complete with stills from the upcoming anime movie!

Naru traced her finger in a tiny infinity symbol over Sailor V's eyemask. A verified real-life superhero! The first one ever in existence, and a girl too. Eyewitnesses and security cameras had gotten both Japanese and international police forces to acknowledge her existence. Naru remembered seeing the clip on TV of Sailor V battling smugglers at a port, flipping higher, running faster, and kicking harder than a normal human being could. Her face was blurred on the video, but experts had confirmed there was no tampering.

It would be _so cool_ to help the police get justice for people by kicking criminal butt, and look stylish doing it too!

The picture was drawn anime style and not a photo, since the real Sailor V was too busy fighting crime in real life to star in a movie about herself. But she didn't seem to care that all kinds of media and merchandise were being made off her. No one had ever shown up to claim profits from the toy companies or the film studios. It seemed like, as long as everything was made in good taste – soft stuffed dolls, pens and pins and keychains, a generic movie plot with good animation – it wasn't worth her attention.

Plenty of detractors tried to critique her. Some TV people (mostly from America, it seemed) didn't like that Sailor V's midriff was bared or that she wore a mini skirt. But Naru liked it. It was a lot like a Japanese girl's school uniform, and by amazing coincidence kind of like Juuban's in particular. So she was already kind of dressed up like a superheroine every time she went to school! And if Sailor V wore a modified school uniform, then she couldn't be that much older than Naru herself.

A year ago, when Sailor V first showed up, was when Naru started wearing her hair half up in a bow too, albeit in a teal colored one that matched her eyes instead of a bright red one. She couldn't be _too_ much of a copy-cat.

Although...

The second to last bell rang, and Naru put her magazine away. Something about being a fan of Sailor V felt like she was betraying Sailor Moon, even though she'd been a fan of Sailor V long before the lunar superheroine had ever shown up. Probably because Sailor Moon had actually saved Naru a bunch of times, and she'd never even met Sailor V. Or maybe because Naru used to wear her hair in pigtails too, but stopped when she graduated elementary school. One had to grow up after all. For a superpowered hero, Sailor Moon ran and cried a lot. Sailor V was more established, more capable, just – _more_.

But that didn't mean Sailor Moon couldn't catch up, and when she did Naru would be happy to be a huge fan of both of them equally.

Everyone heard Usagi before they saw her. Panting and running up the hallway, her Mary Janes clicking like a train on the hard floor, "Almost there, almost there!" and then she burst into the room with a flourishing leap, just as the bell rang.

"MADE IT!"

"USAGI TSUKINO, SIT DOWN AND DON'T YELL!" Haruna-sensei yelled.

Naru mimed a round of applause while Ami just shook her head.

"I made it!" Usagi grinned, taking her seat next to Naru.

Naru opened her mouth to ask about getting together after school but it turned into another yawn.

"Ah, so I'm not the only sleepy-head in class for once!" Usagi whispered, eyebrows waggling. She gently poked Naru in the cheek.

Naru playfully batted Usagi's hand away. "That's because I was one of the _fortunate_ citizens who got their energy drained at the Juuban library yesterday. Didn't you hear?"

It was a little unfair; if Usagi ever read the newspaper it would be for the comic strips. But even so, it seemed like the media cared as much about these monster attacks as they did about the weather or local politics. Somewhat interesting, but just a part of life to report on.

And that was weird too. Even though Sailor V hadn't been officially seen in a few months, she'd made news around the world. But Sailor Moon was a Japanese phenomenon only. Maybe because she'd never been on TV? If a sailor suited teenage heroine saves a tree in a forest but there's no camera crew around to record it, did it really happen?

For days after that first monster, shapeshifted in her mother's form, tried to kill her and hurt all those customers, Naru had expected someone or something else to show up. Any person she met could be a monster in disguise. Maybe they wouldn't even bother trying to hide first.

Or, maybe someone _not_ from wherever the monster came from – someone from the police, or the government, the Japanese version of Agents Mulder and Scully. To interview her, to interrogate her, to take her away and experiment on energy draining. That was the one thing Naru had picked up on during all these supernatural events. They were taking peoples' lifeforce.

But no one cared. No matter how many times Naru was attacked, had her energy drained, was in danger, no one really cared.

Well, her mother had cared that first time. After Sailor Moon had helped untie her, her mom held Naru so tightly it hurt. Naru had been too relieved to care about that. Mrs. Osaka actually rocked back and forth a little, like Naru was still a baby in her arms.

But then she had to focus on the store. Even though monster attacks kept happening in different places, OSA-P Jewelry store got a bit of a 'tarnished' reputation. When the customers woke up from their magical comas, some of them threw off the jewelry and called it cursed. Some of them kept on the clearance-priced pieces and ran out. It was a financial loss either way.

"Oh, I didn't see you – I mean, no I didn't hear. But Sailor Moon saved you!"

"Yes, and I'm grateful of course, but it wasn't until after I'd already been there for hours. The other victims and I were all totally out of it long past closing time. I still had to finish my homework and chores when I got home!" And put some first aid cream on a bruise on her arm, with no idea how she got it.

Haruna-sensei cleared her throat with an "Ah-HEM!" and they both quickly went back to dutifully taking notes.

Writing a note instead, Naru used the foolproof system they'd devised, where she would reach down to scratch at her ankle, and then stuff the note in Usagi's sock instead.

_Want to come over today?_

Usagi quickly scribbled something back. When Haruna-sensei's back was turned, Usagi leaned down and Naru felt an itch on her ankle.

_Sorry not today! I have to meet with Ami and Rei at the Hikawa Shrine. Later?_

With Amy and Rei? Who on Earth was _Rei_? Now Usagi had _another_ new friend she didn't know about?!

Naru wrote her lines down so hard her pencil tip snapped.

* * *

_Nowhen ∞ Nowhere_

A woman stands in front of a gate.

The woman looks human, mortal. The gate looks like it is carved from stone, manmade. While these facts are true, they are not real.

She is guardian, soldier, scout, warrior. She is 戦士, πολεμιστής, _centurionis sola_. She serves Queen Serenity in her one and only duty. It doesn't matter which Queen – she swore fealty to the first Queen Serenity and her dynasty, aeons ago, and she will remain loyal until the last Queen.

Her existence is lonely but that does not mean it is boring. Society did not have the term "solitary confinement" when she began her duty, but her Queen was not ignorant to the effects of an immortal and solitary existence. The woman known as Sailor Pluto, with her powers over time, has many ways to rest, or physically train, or stay mentally sharp.

For one, she lives many lives at once. Setsuna Meiou is matriculating to University for theoretical physics. Theano of Croton teaches the Pythagoreans after the man himself is killed. Zoe Heriot adventures in a way only an astrophysicist librarian can. Many others; many more. Queen Serenity is generous in her gift of reincarnation to her longest-serving subject. They all remember their previous life as her, Sailor Pluto, to some degree, though not necessarily each other. She also remembers the lives she'll be reborn to, to some degree, as they live and die along her multi-millennia long post. Not enough to distract her from her watch or a fight, but enough to keep her curious when she needs it. Life keeps her company in this mostly lifeless space-time.

Mostly, as for another, there is more flotsam and jetsam in both the timestream and the gate's surrounding mists than humanity ever realizes. The quirks of creation can make their way to the gate, and her attention, like creatures breaching the surface of ocean water. Some looking to feed, some just to play, and some just the bodies floating to the top, before sinking back below, to serve as food or shelter to other beings, all a part of the temporal ecosystem. Only twice does she encounter an Old One, rising up dead but dreaming to wake and devour. In immeasurable minutes or centuries, they are defeated. As is anyone else looking to travel through time and twist it to their own personal whims. The gate remains pure and protected.

It is a space of quiet peace when Sailor Pluto perceives the Activation Spell.

It hits her and passes through her like a wave from every direction. A storm surge, a rainbow refraction, a gong hit that leaves a note in the air you can smell and taste. It doesn't knock Sailor Pluto off balance, because it isn't an attack, but she goes to a knee anyway because she doesn't understand what the power _is_. Because it is not for her.

Moving the Garnet Orb in a way that would be impossible to untrained eyes, she scans the area and the residual energy. With both experience and wisdom Sailor Pluto is able to comprehend the unthinkable – that it is a spell from _outside_ the very universe. And it has already permeated the fabric of space-time.

To what purpose? Was it a focused spell, or the side-effect of something even grander? What would such power even manifest as?

She does not have the luxury of speculation. The ripples from the gate indicate the chaos being initiated by the spell. She can feel multiple timelines shake and vibrate, and begin to crossover in unsustainable ways.

Not for the first time, Sailor Pluto compares her three sacred duties with Asimov's three laws of robotics. Did she dare leave her post? Disturb the universe? This wasn't a case of others breaking taboo and traveling through time, and yet the one true timeline was in greater danger than ever.

As philosophers and comedians would say, there's no time like the present. Sailor Pluto makes her choice.

* * *

_...to be continued..._

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

a) Hello anyone out there! This is a story many years in the making. It is a gift to my 11-year-old self, who never did get over that unhappy ending in Sailor Moon S1E24, and never completely forgot it either.

It is, of course, primarily Naru/Nephrite (Molly/Nephlite) but will feature and explore canon couples from both the 90's anime, the manga/Crystal anime, and Buffyverse canon.

I guesstimate this fic will be 70/30 in favor of Sailor Moon to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but we'll see where the story takes us.

b) "A twinge in your heart more powerful than memory alone," is from the TV show "Mad Men," S1E13.

c) Technically the X-Files show debuted a year or so after Sailor Moon did, but from what I've read it was popular in Japan and I thought the mention was too good not to use.

d) The Japanese, Greek, and Latin descriptions of Sailor Pluto translate to _senshi_ (of course), _polemistís_ (warrior), and _the only centurion_, respectively. I don't speak Greek or Latin fluently and just used Google translate, so I welcome any corrections.

e) Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi, with rights to Nakayoshi magazine, Toei Animation, Kodansha Comics, DiC Productions, Viz Media, and various others.

f) Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon, with rights to Mutant Enemy Productions, the WB and UPN (which now form the CW), 20th Television, Dark Horse Comics, and various others.

g) THANK YOU TO MY BETA READERS! Huitzil and Knightcrawler. This story would be terrible without your help. Just like in "regular" writing, you as the editors have a hand in shaping the story. Thank you for your critiques, insights, and moral support. :D

h) The title of this chapter is taken from a famous trope, go get lost in for a few hours.

i) Comments and recs make the heart grow fonder and the fingers type faster. :) I don't mind critiques, and I'd like to hear people's guesses, hopes, and suggestions for the story.


	2. Naru's Choice

Chapter 1: Naru's Choice

_Juuban Park, 1992_

How had it all gone so wrong?

Just a few hours ago Naru Osaka had been safe and warm in bed, asleep in her favorite pajamas. They weren't her cutest pair, with clashing orange and green panels, but they had been a gift from Usagi for her 11th birthday. Oversized back then, and almost too-small of a fit now, they were made out of prized angora wool. Most wool was from sheep, but angora was actually a special type of rabbit, as Usagi had been so excited to tell her.

First Masato had shown up and confessed, his shadow behind her balcony curtains like some twisted version of a Catholic confessional. He confirmed everything Sailor Moon had accused him of; he really _had_ lied to Naru, and he was a part of some supernatural evil organization. She knew since that night in Sankaku plaza when he tried to say goodbye to her that he was caught up in something bad, that he wasn't an innocent man. Even before then something in the back of Naru's mind had known a man well into his twenties shouldn't be so interested in a teenage girl. She always ignored it because the whole world was so much more vivid whenever she was with him. But Masato – _Nephrite_ – was still a good man, that she believed, even if no one else including Nephrite himself did.

Instinct had her call Usagi, not that she would know any better than Naru how to get in touch with Sailor Moon. Still, it helped to hear her best friend's voice after not being able to help Nephrite with something so desperate and important.

Then, three hideous monsters had appeared out of thin air in her own home and attacked her, physically yanking Naru from her room by her limbs and her hair while she screamed for help; to her mom, to Nephrite, to anyone who could hear, until one of them threw a red bead that exploded with some kind of gas and knocked her out. The next thing Naru remembered was regaining consciousness while tied up to the remnant of a knee wall, or maybe a kicked over tabletop. She couldn't turn enough to actually see. The paneling behind her back was dirty – sticky in some places - and under her bare feet was cold concrete. Her head must have hit something while the monsters moved her unconscious body, because her skull felt like it was pulsating in pain.

They taunted her. The monsters never touched her while she was awake, although they did throw little rocks and chunks of gravel they found at her. Whenever rocks landed down the front of her pajama top Naru had to shimmy them out, the monsters watching and laughing while she squirmed, her shackled hands unable to pick them out. One of them tossed a cue ball and it hit bone near the corner of her eye socket, and they laughed when she yelped at the sharp pain.

For what seemed like hours they sneered at the helpless little human, in love with someone who only ever used her. What a pathetic, naïve girl. Did she really think he cared for her at all? That he would come to save her? That someone as powerful as Nephrite, if he actually desired for a human female, would choose a weak child like her? She was all freckles and no curves. The only thing interesting about her was the number of times Sailor Moon had come to rescue Naru, but this time the Sailor Soldiers had no idea Naru was here. That's right, cry all you like, no one's coming to save you.

She tried to gulp down her sobs. The louder her crying the more the monsters tormented her. But she couldn't help it, because they were right. There was no guarantee Nephrite would come to her rescue, and there was no way to save herself. Even if she had a hairpin and knew anything about picking locks, she was tied back with rope, not chains, and her arms were stretched out too far on either side. She'd heard of breaking a wrist to get out of a handcuff, or smearing it with blood for lubrication, but even if it was possible to do that with rope, the thought alone made her nauseous, and she didn't want to throw up again. She'd barely managed to turn her head in time and miss staining her pajamas when her dinner had come rushing back up. Did that happen because of her terror or because she had a concussion? Thinking about it only added to her dreadful headache.

The only thing she could do was sit there and endure, and hope it would be over soon. She didn't care about whatever the monsters bickered about, since when they did that, it meant they left her alone. She understood that they were acting on orders from _Zoisite_, that they all worked under _Queen Beryl_, and Naru was both ransom and bait for Nephrite. Odd how they all had semi-precious gemstones for names, but otherwise none of the information was helpful to her.

The more Naru tried not to think about Nephrite, showing up versus not showing up, the more it took up her thoughts. Part of her didn't want him to have to fight monsters and get hurt, but part of her desperately hoped for him to come save her. If they were all here when morning finally came, those beastly women would probably follow through on their threats and kill her after all. Or worse, _just leave her there to starve to death_. And either way, she'd be dead in the basement of some abandoned bar, her body rotting for months until it was found, and who would take care of her mother? Who would take care of Usagi? But that last thought was sour in her mind. Usagi had a lot of new friends lately, and none of them had really tried to be Naru's friends too.

Her hands and feet had grown numb by the time Nephrite appeared, tall and menacing. Naru cried out to him, but once again she proved useless. All three monsters charged at him.

"Die, traitor!"

They seemed more capable of destruction than any of the monsters in Tokyo she'd seen or heard about before. One of them threw two handfuls of red marbles that all exploded with dark, cloudy gas, something like tear gas if the welling in her eyes was any indication. Another generated some type of disorientating sound waves, so strong Naru would swear she could see the waves make concentric ripples in the air. And the third let loose some ugly _thing_ from her arm, firing a biological weapon of razor-point tipped vines like a cannon.

Nephrite dodged them all, proving to be the stronger and faster warrior. He _defeated_ them - she'd never seen a man hit a woman before. The thuds of a fist meeting flesh were oddly inaudible under the other noises of a real fight: the grunts and shouts of pain or exertion, and the sounds of everyone's boots moving for a better foothold. Then Nephrite conjured a sharp, shining sword, charging forward to... _thrust_ it into the wall. He did it in a way that he could also hold it diagonal to the vine monster's neck. Just close enough that if she moved to breathe the sword edge would break skin. Nephrite's warning was hard and final, and that was it. The fight was over. And only when he stepped back and the monster took giant, heaving gasps, did Naru remember to start breathing again herself.

He saved her. To anyone else, the long, blank stare he gave Naru before untying her would seem emotionless and cold, maybe even irritated. But she knew it was only a mask, that on the inside Nephrite's emotions were just as spiraled-out as her own. When she crumpled after trying to walk a single step, because everything from her knees down was a pins and needles sensation, he just picked Naru up in his arms and walked out.

She almost fainted all over again.

Eventually she found her voice and remembered to thank him for rescuing her.

"Don't thank me. If you didn't know me, this wouldn't have happened." Nephrite's voice was flat and toneless, maybe a little raspier than his usual smooth baritone, stunned into speaking the plain truth for once. "In fact, I don't even know why I saved you."

Naru had a pretty good idea why. The thought wasn't just in her head, it radiated out from her heart like physical warmth. That's why, even when Nephrite tried to protest that he'd been lying to her the whole time and it was in his nature to keep being dishonest, she wasn't afraid to tell him how she felt.

"That's okay with me," she told him, and the surprise on his face looked real enough. "As long as you always remain by my side... I can live with the lying." Which was stupid, but Naru didn't care. Demanding honesty just didn't seem important at the moment, not when he was holding her so close.

Then she saw Nephrite's injury. He hadn't reacted to it at all so far, but it looked like a very deep cut and it must have stung badly – all while carrying her! "It's all right," he insisted over her distress. The green blood clotting around it barely registered in Naru's mind. She only saw evidence of her own helplessness being taken out on someone she loved.

"It's _not_ all right, this happened to you because of me! We have to hide from those women before they find us again. Come on, follow me." Naru led them deep into Juuban Park, since they were already by an opening to it. She kept a tight grip on Nephrite's sleeve, on the arm that wasn't injured.

"Do you know where you're going?" Nephrite asked as they walked. He was... amused, he decided, at her unwavering determination to lead him to safety among the trees. Normally he'd never yield to anyone or anything that tried to drag him anywhere.

"Oh, well, no. I just want to get a lot of distance between us and them," she said.

"That's not what I meant. We're actually getting closer to my base."

Naru stopped and looked up at him. "Your base? You mean your home?"

"No." There was a long moment of silence. "I keep it slightly phased out of this dimension," he explained. "It touches most of the forests and parks in the prefecture, for hidden access or an easy escape route. They're only accessible when I'm near them. If we keep going that way, we'll run into the main path." He pointed somewhere northwest of them. Nephrite usually kept his tricks and traps as secret as possible in the Dark Kingdom, but it felt natural to explain them to this girl.

Naru was stalled. Should they just continue to Nephrite's place then? It would be safer, but there was also something decidedly grown-up about them going back to his place alone.

Then again, he'd been very clear about it being a base of operations. Not a home at all.

Looking around, Naru quickly found what she thought was a better spot, at the base of a large tree. The truck was wide enough to lean back against, and there was a big gap in the overhead canopy that let in lots of light. It was almost a full moon, and this far in the park away from streetlamps the starlight was radiant. She'd be able to see what she was doing.

Naru had really enjoyed the first-aid section in her Home Economics class last semester – here was a way for her desire to help people made real and physical. She had worked hard to get the highest grade in the class. So she didn't feel too self-conscious asking Nephrite to take off his jacket. But once he did Naru was surprised to see he was leaner than she ever realized. The loose cut of his business suits and that weird gray uniform, plus all that (magnificent!) hair – it all had the effect of making him look much bulkier than he actually was.

Naru sacrificed a strip of fabric from her pajama top to bandage the nasty cut on his arm. Soft, pliable wool was a much better choice than whatever the thick and scratchy fabric his uniform was made out of. _That_ made her self-conscious; unlike some of the bustier girls in class, she didn't sleep in a bralette under her pajamas, and had to be careful when ripping away fabric that would expose her skin.

Not long after she began wrapping the strip of fabric around his upper arm, Nephrite reached over and carefully took one of her wrists in his left hand, to better examine the rope burns left by these monsters when they restrained her. He'd taken off his white gloves with his jacket and his hands were bare. They were rougher than what she'd expect from a traditional businessman's, and warm on the inside pulse of her wrist. "I'm all right," she told him, and tugged her hand back to finish her work.

It didn't seem to be the perfect moment, but if you waited for perfect moments they never arrived. You had to make them yourself. So, right there in the still moonlight, and the occasional owl hoot and wind-rustle of leaves, in one of those rare silences between people that didn't feel awkward, and wrapping a makeshift bandage around a bicep so perfect even a deep gash with pea-colored blood didn't make a difference to her, Naru went for it.

"You know, right downtown on 3rd Avenue there's this little cafe that serves the _best_ chocolate parfait."

"Chocolate parfait?" He said the words like he'd never heard them before, separate or together.

"Yeah, do you like it?"

"... Yes, I do."

Naru grinned at him. "You're lying!" She said it cheerfully, and it threw him off.

"But you're only lying because you want to be nice to me." She finished tying the makeshift bandage, tightly to provide pressure. Nephrite flexed to test it and thanked her. And he meant it – he'd never met anyone, human or otherwise, who was so open and honest with their intentions. And had the conviction to follow through on them. It was... safe for him to be around her. Ironic, since consorting with him, and by extension the Dark Kingdom, was decidedly not safe for Naru. Her skill at tying a bandage was a bonus.

Stretching out beside him, Naru spoke from the heart she wore on her sleeve. Or in this case, the little pocket on the front of her pajama top. "Anyway, I was wondering if you'd like to go there with me sometime. I know it's kind of a silly idea, but I've dreamed of going there with you. To share a chocolate parfait together."

It was definitely a silly idea. But so had been the idea to go through with rescuing Naru, and he still hadn't come up with a plan to twist tonight's events into a narrative that Queen Beryl would accept. Typical of him – act first on his emotions, think later with his brain. He'd taken a lot of satisfaction in just physically thrashing Zoisite's lackeys with his bare hands instead of setting up enchantments. Leaving them alive was a semi-calculated choice. In the heat of the moment it had become more important to ensure Naru's safety, and sometimes a show of power could force a change in loyalties. He could be as ruthless as Kunzite when he wanted, if not as cold.

Nephrite was strangely in the mood to do more things the Dark Kingdom wouldn't approve of, or even understand. Earlier that very night he'd lied to her and manipulated Naru. And here they were sitting together under the all-knowing stars, his secret identity and evil plans completely blown, and she _still_ cared about him. Wouldn't leave his side. The idea of continuing to use her as an unwitting agent felt... distant somehow.

A plain human girl had such _power_ over him. But unlike with Beryl he welcomed it. It didn't want to control him or use him, or crush him like a bug. It just wanted to support him. Bask around him. Nephrite wanted to know more, to know _her_ better. The idea of spending more time with Naru, without any hidden evil agenda, and being able to just talk like they were doing right now –

"Why not. Let's do it."

"You mean it!?" Naru's face lit with delight. Being literally carried away was one thing, but the girl asking out the boy and getting a yes? Even in the modern era of the 1990s, that was something!

"You think I'm lying to you," he teased. The sentiment came so easy to him. How strange.

"Mm-mmm," she disagreed. "I can't wait!"

Then, because the night was already so crazy, with the confession, and the kidnapping, and the dramatic rescue, and then being carried bridal-style by the literal man of her dreams long enough that she'd been able to listen to his heartbeat, Naru decided to tease him back.

"Oh," she asked, "But will your evil organization give you a day off? Like maybe this Sunday, or – do you have any holidays?"

She would never forget the dumbfounded look on his face, or the way he started laughing. It was so absurd! She was out in the woods in the middle of the night, way past curfew, with a man her mom thought was total bad news, and he was looking forward to a date with a teenage girl, in between scheming to steal energy from other humans, for a sorcerer Queen who wanted to take over the planet Earth.

They laughed until they cried. Somehow, through all the lies and the danger, plain old infatuation and evil manipulations, two people had made a connection with each other.

But that had to end, of course.

Nephrite sensed the attack milliseconds before the terrible vines struck. He could have moved out of the way fast enough, if he didn't take the extra second to try and pull Naru with him. Trying to save both of them would only mean they'd both get hit. Just like that night in the plaza only days ago, a strange instinct overwhelmed him.

He pushed Naru out of the way and took on the full impact of the assault. She gasped as she saw a twisting mass of branches slam into him, impaling him all the way through his chest. It stabbed through shoulder muscles and punched through his scapula bone with a _crack_ he felt more than he heard. Zoisite's personal assassin let her plant-like arm glow ferociously, breaking off a piece to leave in Nephrite and the rest to recoil back to her. There was easily an arm's length of evil thorns protruding out from his chest, and a decent amount hanging out from his back, severely affecting his balance.

Then she said something that truly made him dizzy. "You let your guard down. Those thorns will drain your energy until you meet your death."

The creatures of the Dark Kingdom had all kinds of physical mutations, but the innate ability to drain energy – without a tool or a magical focus – was rare enough to be nonexistent. The last time a youma had been foolish enough to openly display such an talent she'd been summarily executed. All energy was under dominion to the Dark Kingdom, to their Great Ruler beyond Queen Beryl, except for the amount individuals naturally produced for themselves to stay alive. It was forbidden to take someone else's energy for yourself, or even worse, to drain it away without collection like the thorns were doing to Nephrite.

He could already feel his right side going numb. It was a lethal feedback loop. Normally, Nephrite could recover from almost any physical attack, no matter how many bones broke or blood was let – as long as he could divert energy to healing. Conversely, an energy-draining attack could normally be blocked or stopped by his own powers and he would recover in time. The benefits of being one of the four Kings of the Dark Kingdom, a being higher and more powerful than a lowly human.

But now he had a stabbing cluster of branches draining his energy and his physical health at the same time. Any choice forward wouldn't work. Telekinetically pull out the vines? He wouldn't have enough power leftover to dampen the blood loss. Direct enough power against the vines to 'short circuit' their draining? He wouldn't have any physical strength leftover to survive the traumatic effects of being impaled. Call for power from the stars? The Plant Sisters would interpret it as the beginning of an attack and go on the offensive. That cut on his arm might have even been draining the faintest amount from him the entire time too.

Now Nephrite understood why the Three Sisters, the one called Grape in particular, were favorites of Zoisite. Youma of such ability and cunning were hard to find or train in the Dark Kingdom. Even through the haze of pain Nephrite had enough anger left for that bastard. If he survived, he could pass off his trembling as an effect of his temper, and not the effort it took to remain upright and coherent. And then he would make Zoisite regret ever attacking him, even indirectly, as befitted the most scheming denizen of the Dark Kingdom.

"A fitting end for a traitor," one of them giggled. "If you don't want us to kill the girl too, then hand over the Dark Crystal."

"You can have it," Nephrite immediately agreed. Even if the thing ever worked as intended, it wasn't important anymore. He turned slightly and saw Naru was still there, shaking almost in sync with him. "Get out of here, now!" he commanded her.

"No!" cried Naru.

"Run away!"

She wanted to. Just the sight of those same three evil women made Naru want to run screaming in the other direction. But she was more afraid to leave Nephrite to their whims, and ran to his side instead. "I won't!" Not without doing everything she could to help, no matter how dangerous.

"Go, you _idiot_!" Nephrite tried the opposite of every trick he'd ever played on Naru, hoping to insult her into leaving him, even physically shoving her away. He should have known it wouldn't work. Instead she grabbed a branch in each hand and pulled, activating an electrical force that made the air around them light up and crackle.

Nephrite could smell when the skin on her hands started to blister at the heat and could only listen as Naru shrieked and cried. The thorns didn't, and wouldn't, budge at all. But she didn't let go. This ordinary, frail human girl wouldn't give up on him, no matter how much pain or energy it cost her, and she wanted nothing in return. All he wanted was to save her from it.

The three sisters laughed. "Stupid girl. Do you really think a pathetic human like you could pull out those thorns?"

"Give it up! You have to get out of here!" Nephrite was reduced to pleading. Every moment she stayed put her in further danger. The electric sparks burned tiny pinpricks of holes in both of their clothes. "Just leave me, you've done enough!"

Then he felt something impossible – so impossible one of the youma echoed what he was thinking and he was distracted from the throbbing of his fractured shoulder blade and his life energy draining away. _The thorns were coming out._ It was Naru! She was actually pulling them out! Was human love such a powerful force after all?

Through tears Naru pleaded, "Nephrite, please don't die! Hold on, please!"

If the Sailor Soldiers had been able to show up right then, instead of barely a minute later, events might have gone very differently. But sometimes one minute makes all the difference, and sometimes even the incredible strength of one brave girl isn't enough to fight off the overwhelming forces of evil in the world.

The tallest of the women watching, Housenka, had seen enough. She and her sisters weren't about to fail like Nephrite had, and suffer the consequences. "I'm going to finish both of you!" she shouted. "Now die!"

The beating she'd taken at the abandoned bar fresh in her mind, the youma fired off a hailstorm of more red beads than ever before.

Nephrite, the only one with any training, moved with nothing but willpower and adrenaline to shield Naru. If he could spare a thought, it might have been that Naru probably wouldn't have even noticed the assault because she was too focused on him. Or it might have been that he really wasn't going to live through this after all, because something far stronger than his natural survival instinct had taken over. But he couldn't spare the energy to even think, because he had to protect Naru from multiple explosions of fire and poison gas, all with a giant mess of branches still painfully rammed through his shoulder.

The red smoke cleared and Naru realized he'd protected her, again, from another attack. When she opened her eyes it was easily the worst thing she'd ever seen in her life – by moving her out of the way Nephrite had taken the brunt of the full strike and jammed the branches right back through himself, maybe even a little further in. Most of his undershirt had been seared off. The entirety of his back was marked up with burns and gashes; bits of twigs or gravel from the forest floor had embedded in his torso from the force of the blasts, and even some small scraps of fabric had fused to his skin from the immense heat.

He was _covered_ in blood. She could see sweat forming on his quickly paling face from the immense pain, so much more than before. He still managed to whisper to Naru and ask if she was all right, before collapsing in agony.

It was all her fault. And now there was truly nothing she could do.

A slim, androgynous man appeared in a flurry of cherry blossoms by the Plant Sisters. Naru barely registered him taking Nephrite's dark crystal and gloating, or instructing the monsters to finish them off before disappearing again. Her mind was stuck on a doomed mantra; _"He can't die! He can't, he can't!" _Her hands fluttered over Nephrite, wanting to hold him but not wanting to cause him any more pain.

"Damn you Zoisite," Nephrite rasped. He gathered the very last of his strength – the ends of his energy – to sit back up. He'd prefer to face his death literally.

"Run; leave me," he told Naru one last time. The monsters giggled in the background, ready to savor in their destruction.

Love had given her the strength to bare her heart to the man she adored, open and vulnerable like an exposed nerve. It let her stand up to magical vigilantes more powerful than her, to stand firm as a weaponized tiara of all things bore down on her with the ability to kill her. It let her tolerate hours of enslavement and cruelty because evil agents from another dimension thought of her as a thing to be bartered and discarded.

But it wasn't enough to save Nephrite, the way he had always saved her. She just wasn't strong enough. So be it; Naru still had the strength to stay, and she hoped her mother would forgive her. Maybe fate would be kind enough to let her be killed second, and Nephrite could die at least knowing she would never abandon him. He'd never have to see how scared she was to die at all.

And then, somehow, in the middle of it all - the splinters from the giant thorns in Nephrite's shoulder like needles in her charred hands - the taunts from the evil women sauntering ever closer - the bright, electrical sparks coming from the branch ends like biological downed live wire – the pleas from Nephrite telling her to save herself, and the whimpers that must be coming from her. Screaming and whimpering like a girl in a Hollywood horror movie.

Screaming like that first time she saw one of Sailor Moon's hideous monsters, before she ever met Nephrite, her own mother's face melting into a zombie rictus too wide and jagged, and Naru's covered gasp only serving to come out later as a scream when shock gave way to fear. She was so tired of being the victim to all these monsters. She didn't want that to become her life.

In the middle of it all Naru heard another voice very clearly, in her head and in her heart.

_"__Are you ready to be strong?"_

_to be continued..._

a) Content for this chapter is taken from the both the original DiC dub and the later Viz dub. We tend to drag the DiC dub to the moon and back, but if there was nothing to the original English voice actors' performance it wouldn't have affected us so much in the first place!


	3. The Reboot is Always Darker & Edgier

Chapter 2: The Reboot is Always Darker and Edgier

_Juuban Park, 1992_

_"Are you ready to be strong?"_

There was no need to answer out loud, or even wonder why a question outside herself had so clearly formed in her soul. The power was a rushing wind, a hammer blow, a slap and an embrace and true love and sure death.

Naru's hands – burned and bloodied - clenched into fists.

It happened so fast. She put one hand to Nephrite's chest, to the side of his injury for leverage, and with the other took hold of a branch. Instead of pulling from the ends like last time, she knew to grab it right where it met his skin and in a reverse hold. In one fluid motion she yanked it right out of him, turned, and flung it straight at the monster it came from. The toxic thorn hit her in the dead _middle_ of her chest and she went flying backwards with a satisfying yelp.

Before the shock wore off on the other two monsters, the Sailor Soldiers arrived, and then they had no time to spare for Naru or Nephrite.

She made quick work of the rest of the branches, pulling them out one after the other and hatefully throwing them as hard and as far away as she could. Nephrite collapsed in Naru's arms once all the vines were gone, blood streaming down from his chest wound at a troubling pace. His eyes were comically wide. "How?" he rasped.

"Don't speak," Naru said. "Please, you have to conserve your energy. We'll get you to a doctor." She used his discarded jacket to help press down on his injury, and he made an awful noise at the pain of it. She'd been in a panic just a moment ago, but now that the branches had been removed and the Sailor Soldiers were taking care of the monsters, Naru was strangely focused. She had to take care of Nephrite, and keep him alive, and get him help.

"Naru?"

She looked up at Sailor Moon, and the other two girls. The three monsters were gone. "Please, he needs help!"

The three Sailor Soldiers looked at each other.

"He saved my life, you can't let him die!" She was becoming hysterical again after all. Was she going to have to fight the so-called good guys? Three Sailor Soldiers for three monsters. She could do it this time - Naru could land a hit before that tiara reached her, she could _feel_ it.

Sailor Mars crossed her arms. "He's an attempted murderer. Maybe this is his penance." Naru could have attempted murder herself at that, if it hadn't meant letting go of Nephrite.

"And any hospital is going to notice that green blood," Sailor Mars continued.

"You're supposed to be heroes!" Naru cried. She clamped down on the part of herself that wanted to smack them senseless for just standing there, because it wouldn't help Nephrite. She had to remember that. She stared at their leader, Sailor Moon. "Please, I'm begging you! Don't let him die! He deserves – _Usagi_?!"

The Sailor Soldiers all gasped. The basic details of the magical sailor suited superheroes were known throughout Tokyo – blonde pigtails, short blue hair, long black tresses, all of them teenage girls – but the magic that blurred any photos taken of them also worked in real time. Looking at them in real life was like looking at someone in a dream. Naru didn't know how, but she suddenly recognized her oldest friend.

"How do you recognize her?" Sailor Mars demanded, but Naru ignored her.

There was just no end to the shocks that night. "You're my friend," Naru pleaded. She was openly crying, now. "You're supposed to be my best friend."

Tears started to form in Sailor Moon's eyes too. She shook her head and pumped her fist. "Right! We have to get Nephrite to a hospital. Let's call an ambulance!"

"Great idea moon-for-brains, with what? Our communicators only contact each other. And what hospital could we trust to take him to?"

"We can take him to my mother."

Everyone stared at Sailor Mercury. "She's a doctor, she'll know what to do."

Looking around, Sailor Mercury then added, "But even if we could call an ambulance, how would it get here through the trees? A regular car might fit but an ambulance is too wide. Maybe a taxi? Or there might be a pay phone nearby."

"Oh!" Naru remembered what Nephrite had told her earlier, and Masato Sanjouin's notorious red sports car. "Nephrite, is your car at your base?"

He was barely able to answer "yes," and it came out more as air than a voiced answer. Naru explained the basics of his dimensional space as she understood it, and Sailor Mercury pressed an earring that made a blue screen form across her eyes. "I can see the boundary! We'll all have to be touching him to cross it, but it's doable."

"Oh great," Sailor Mars grumbled. But she watched in surprise as Naru used a modified shoulder drag to carefully pull Nephrite to the portal edge all by herself, guided by Sailor Mercury. The Soldiers all took a hold of his arm and then walked through, a buzzing sensation the only indication they were crossing a gateway. Then they were in a completely different forest, with a dirt path right in front of them, leading up to large and old-fashioned Western style mansion.

Nephrite's trademark red Ferrari was there in sight.

It was unlocked with the keys helpfully already in the ignition. Of all the things Nephrite had to worry about, someone breaking into his car or stealing it wasn't one of them. No, better to worry about how he could feel his lungs breathing something pulpier than air. The stars shone brighter than normal above his mansion base and they didn't match the normal pattern for that time of year on Earth, over the islands of Japan. The constellation the Greeks called Scorpio was ascendant on the Eastern horizon. The 8th House: sex, death, and rebirth.

Stars help him, please. He didn't want to go.

The three Sailor Soldiers helped move him to the backseat, typically cramped for a sports car. Naru cradled his head in her lap and tried to move strands of his hair away from his face. All of it was sticky with cold sweat and dark green blood. "Just keep breathing, Nephrite," she said. "Don't waste energy trying to talk, just focus on breathing and staying awake."

Sailor Moon got stuck in the small backseat as well, with one of Nephrite's booted legs nowhere to go but over her knees. "Um," she said.

Sailor Mars claimed the driver's seat, Sailor Mercury took shotgun as the navigator, and a cat – a _cat_! where did the cat come from? – hopped in too, taking perch between the headrests in the backseat. Naru belatedly recognized it as Usagi's cat... _Luna_. With a bald spot in the shape of a crescent moon. How had she never put any of this together?

"Do you know how to drive?" Sailor Mercury asked.

"Better than my blind grandpa at least."

Sailor Mars slammed on the gas and the clutch petals at the same time, shooting down the dirt pathway and onto the regular expressway like she had learned from so many hours playing racing games at the arcade. Sailor Moon's screams were distant in her ears, and she barely noticed each time she knocked over a curb, everyone's head smacking into the windows or the head rests. At one point Sailor Moon was kneed in the face by Nephrite – involuntarily, he would swear.

"Which way?!" Sailor Mars shouted.

Sailor Mercury braced herself using the dashboard and ceiling. There were no safety handlebars. "T-take the third exit coming up, east," she squeaked.

Naru was both grateful for, and fearful of, Sailor Mars's aggressive driving skills.

"So... Nephrite." Sailor Moon tapped her two index fingers together while she spoke. "Does this mean you're going to leave us alone from now on? Because if people from your own evil organization are trying to kill you, and we're the ones saving you, I think you owe us a pretty big favor. What do you say, even-steven? Pretty-please?"

Nephrite was only able to look at her with incredulous eyes, and just continued to bleed all over the expensive leather.

"Usagi, is this really the time?" said an exasperated Naru.

"What! He's tried to kill us before, taking him to a hospital for help is kind of counterproductive to our mission, and also my life, and also my love-life. You totally owe us!" She slapped both her hands on his boot shaft to make her point. As if he needed any more hits that night.

Mercury turned around in her front seat. "Sailor Moon, did you... did you just use the word 'counterproductive?' Correctly?"

"WHICH WAY DO I TURN!?"

"Ah, sorry! Left!"

Nephrite groaned at the sharp turn, momentum bumping all of them around inside the car, and the cat yowled at a painful pitch. "We're almost there," Naru said. She had no idea if it was true. Maybe it was her turn to lie to him.

Naru's whole body felt like it was humming, maybe from the shock and triumph from finally being able to pull out those branches and actually take down one of those monsters. It was like she had so much _energy_; like she'd slept for ten hours and then had ten cups of coffee, and she was facing a hated opponent on the other side of the tennis court and she _knew_ she was going to crush them. If only she could give some of it to Nephrite.

Eventually Sailor Mercury lead them up a specific road by a large hospital, past the regular emergency entrance with its glowing red sign, to a second set of unremarkable doors. "Mother says they have this second entrance for high profile patients – YOU'RE GOING TO CRASH!"

Sailor Mars slammed on the brakes. The cat went flying with an almighty feline screech and hit the front glass windshield. They still bumped over a curb and landed half in the bushes. Naru twisted in time with the movements of the car to shelter Nephrite from colliding with the seats in front, and to stop him from falling off the backseat entirely.

"Luna!" Sailor Moon pushed her way out of the Ferrari first to reach over Sailor Mercury and grab her cat, ironically crushing her in a hug of fierce love right there in the parking lot.

Naru barely noticed Sailor Mars or Sailor Mercury de-transforming before running inside. She was focused on the faint rise and fall of Nephrite's chest. But he did notice – because it meant they were alone in the car. Without the annoying audience of the Sailor Soldiers, it was suddenly important that he speak, that Naru know something true from him if he were going to die.

Over the wet, bloody feel in his mouth, Nephrite started to talk. "Naru... I want you to know... I'm glad I met you..."

"Please don't. The doctor will be here any second, and you can tell me whatever you like later, ok? You owe me a chocolate parfait. I know you said you couldn't stop lying, but just this once you have to keep your promise to me."

The main interior light clicked off, having reached its automatic shut-off point. What a horrible sham of a date. Naru knew about American-style dates; burgers and a shared milkshake, then an outdoor movie, watched together in the dark backseat of a boy's car. Or not watching together. She'd been having those daydreams a lot lately. But here she was, holding the man of her dreams closer than ever before, and it wasn't romantic at all. Any minute he could stop breathing. His skin was clammy and cold. The air in the car had a sick, metallic tang. Naru could only hear Nephrite's wet gasps for air, and her own pathetic sniffles.

The door behind her was pulled open, letting the cool night air rush in. "We can take over from here, miss!" Naru reluctantly let go of Nephrite and moved out of the way – was that his left arm reaching for her, or just a painful flail and her overactive imagination? – so the nurses and medical assistants could move him onto a gurney.

There was a flurry of activity, tubes and tools and a woman with dark blue hair commanding everyone.

"_Nande kotta?!_" one of the nurses said. "This green stuff, it's not some chemical, it's his blood!"

"Sulfhemoglobinemia," snapped Dr. Mizuno. "Don't stop moving! Let's get him to the suite, and someone go get as much hemostatic gauze as they can carry. We're going to need to repack that wound at least once before we get there."

The four girls ran after the medical team into the hospital. Sailor Moon had de-transformed to just her best friend. Naru numbly recognized the other girls as Usagi's new friends, the ones that had been taking up so much of her free time lately, leaving less and less for Naru. She was still barefoot.

"They have a VIP suite here?" Rei side-eyed Ami. "That would have been nice to know when my grandpa had his knee surgery."

"I don't think... it's not really that kind of suite," said Ami. She looked a little ashen. This was the first time she was seeing her mother in action, _really_ in action and not just doing rounds in a clinic.

They all gathered in a strangely large elevator, and one of the nurses pressed three numbers at once, holding them all down. 8-9-3. The floor they wheeled off at was devoid of any machines or people in the hallways, although the operating room was properly equipped. And sterile, so as assisting surgeons came in and out, Naru and the others were stopped from going in.

"I guess we're just going to have to wait," said Usagi. "Don't they have chairs in this hospital? How is a lonely maiden supposed to be vigilant by her beloved's bedside?"

One of the surgical assistants came up to them and pulled his mask off. "I've been told to get the full story of how Mr. Sanjouin was injured. I don't think anyone really believes he was attacked by monsters. Those Sailor Soldier vigilantes are just an urban legend."

Ami's face flared pink.

"Sailor Moon is not made up!" Usagi loudly berated the man. Her voice pitched higher on every word. "She fights real monsters for love and justice!"

The doctor looked like he would much rather be back in the OR, digging through a patient's bloody innards instead of talking to live people. "The chemical burns and cuts on his back we can take care of, although he might need skin grafts. I just need to know about whatever made the giant hole in his upper chest by his right shoulder, so we can treat for any particulates. Was he shot?"

"Thorns," said Naru. "Like very large, thorned branches."

"So, a tree branch?" the doctor extrapolated from her description. "We've seen that a couple times after a bad wind storm. They're just like bullets, they don't need to be big or heavy at all to do a lot of damage."

"They didn't feel very heavy when I finally pulled them out..." The doctor started at her, and Naru realized in hindsight there was something strange about her newfound strength that night, and she probably needed to be more cautious talking about it. "I mean – I was full of adrenaline, normally I'd never be able to do such a thing."

"What do you mean you took it out?!"

The four girls were surprised by his anger, the only personality he'd shown so far.

"You _never_ take out an impaled object without being right at the hospital, that just worsens blood loss! Leaving it there tamponades better than any hands or packing gauze! Even a tiny puncture can kill because ignorant, impatient people just won't leave the object in and wait for proper medical attention!"

Just then they heard all kinds of alarms go off, and there was a rise in the volume of Dr. Mizuno's commands. A tell-tale sign that something was very wrong. The surgeon turned on his heel and sprinted back into the OR.

"Naru... Naru, you're shaking," said Usagi, softly.

"He's wrong," she said. "I heard that monster say it would drain his energy and kill him, I had to get them out. I had to! I did it to save him!" She felt like stamping her foot, like a child. Or throwing something, or running into the operating room. Anything that would let her _do_ something to help.

How could she feel so powerful but still be so helpless in the end? Usagi hugged her trembling friend while Rei and Ami looked on. All they could do was wait.

* * *

Deep in Juuban Park, the vines from the Dark Kingdom finally began to wither and fade, left without a strong source of energy to feed on.

Two of them lay in the grass, unable to draw on the deep, slow power of the Earth, and eventually dissolved and dissipated into the night air.

A curious squirrel crawled on a third branch, seizing up and dying at the shock of its energy drain. That vine persisted through sunrise before vanishing in a puff of shiny dust.

The last branch – the last one pulled out of Nephrite, as it happened – Naru had thrown further and harder than all the others. It had embedded in the trunk of a keyaki tree, going almost all the way through with maybe ten inches poking through the bark on the other side. Like a lone thorn on a rose stem. The razor point was still lethal, as some unfortunate forest critters would find out.

There, cocooned in the heartwood, and anointed with both Nephrite and Naru's blood, the vine continued to take on energy. It consumed life and nutrition along with the tree - feasting, aging, growing.

Waiting.

_to be continued..._

**Author's Notes:**

Special shout-out to Nancy Holder who wrote the novelization for Buffy's 7th season; those are her words in the 2nd paragraph of this chapter, they were too awesome not to include here.


	4. Magical Girls Come Thundering In

Chapter 3: Magical Girls Come Thundering In

Naru was having a dream like nothing she'd ever dreamt before.

She was standing in sand. Hot and gritty under her feet, the ancient sand of the Kalahari Desert. A girl circled around Naru, always just out of the corner of her eye, with very dark skin and wrought in white: white shreds of cloth and white clay paint. _Onēsan_, a thousand times more so than Rui Saionji was. But this big sister was also a thousand times more dangerous.

"Don't be mean," another girl chastised _onēsan_. She wore the elaborate and distinctive many-layered, many-colored kimono of the Heian period. The outfit was from one thousand years ago, and so was she. "Every superhero needs an origin story." Her face turned to Naru, and when she spoke again there was sadness underneath her kindness. "Hello my descendant self! Hug Aikiko for me when you wake, and hold on to her this time; she was my only true friend. And always check the feet."

Naru looked down at her bare feet in the sand, and as she stood there the sand turned cold and grey, fading into dust in the sudden darkness. She looked up to the stars for light and the closest heavenly body was Earth itself. A viridescent shooting star passed through the black sky, bright and fast in the distance, before it was gone.

She was standing in ruins. Broken limestone columns and rubble everywhere; plenty of chalk dust remained but no Olympic champions were left. In the distance, the head of an odd battle ax stood embedded in an engraved plinth. It all looked like the ruins of ancient Greece.

A woman – no, a queen – no, a goddess – was alone in the middle of the battlefield. She had hair so white it appeared to glow.

The goddess performed her greatest triumph; better destinies for her subjects, her girls. Then she fell over, dead, and said, "That was nifty!"

A giant, luminous diamond fell from her hand, but no matter how much the katamari rolled no dust or debris would stick to it. It stopped at Naru's feet, incandescent.

Princess D, guest of honor at the masquerade Naru had gone to just a week ago, cleared her throat and pushed her large, thick glasses up at the bridge of her nose. "The diamond industry is plagued by corruption and tragedy!" She began a rallying speech, about African blood diamonds and the gem trade industry.

From nowhere, the princess whipped out a picket sign in one hand and a jumbo-sized bottle of strawberry syrup in the other. She held the bottle directly over her head. "People will do all kinds of evil things just for some shiny crystals they think are valuable. I won't stand for it anymore! DIE CAPITALIST PIGS!"

She doused herself like an ice cream sundae, torrents of sweet fake blood in her hair and down her suffragette-style gown, and she marched back and forth shouting, "Down with DeBeers! Down with the Patriarchy!"

While Princess D chanted, Naru knelt down to pick up and examine the gemstone. When her fingers closed around it, she didn't feel the cool, thermal-conductive surface of a diamond. It felt like a warm heartbeat in the palm of her hand.

Out of nowhere a hideous face appeared inches away from Naru's own. It hissed in Naru's ear: _"Is that the legendary silver crystal?"_ Its face wasn't one at all, but a warped _noh_ mask with a bumpy, pronounced brow ridge and fangs pointing out of its smile.

In a smooth, deliberate motion, Naru lifted her arm up, turned her palm down, and opened her hand.

Nephrite's hexagonal prism, reflecting a black rainbow, dropped down and struck the ground.

The _noh_-face attacked. Naru reacted then, screaming as the monster tried to grab and hit her. Its painted fangs turned real, opening outwards like a Venus flytrap.

"Help!" Naru screamed. She blindly blocked kicks and punches, her arms and legs quickly becoming bruised and bloody. "Somebody please save me!"

Princess D chanted on, uncaring. _Onēsan_ stood off to the side, her head tilted. "Save yourself," she finally spoke. Her voice growled with immense strength, but it was dry and long dead.

The _noh_-face knocked Naru to the ground, puffs of moon dust rising at her _thump_. It pinned her there, it's fangs growing longer and it's jaw opening wider, its mouth a cold wound near Naru's neck. She could smell its rotting breath. No matter how hard she tried to shake back and forth, she couldn't break free. It would take a bite of her any second!

There was a distinct _crack_ in the old air of the moon, and something rolled near Naru's hand. The wooden post of Princess D's picket sign had broken off, leaving one end a jagged and deadly point.

Stretching out her fingers Naru grabbed at the stake, once, twice, but her attempts only pushed it away further. The fangs brushed at the skin of her neck like two fresh papercuts and she screamed at the shocking sting of it.

"Naru?"

Both Naru and the monster turned to look. Princess D was no longer Princess D. It was Usagi, wearing an astonishingly lovely white gown. And she was elegant and regal, somehow, underneath all the gory splatter.

She looked like she'd been in an explosion, with bursts of bright strawberry red all over her torso and limbs. Something was wrong with her ribcage and it bowed in at places where it shouldn't. One of her odango-style ponytails was much shorter than the other because it had burned off.

Hot blood beaded at Usagi's hairline, trickling down her forehead and catching at the inside corner of her eye, before falling again like a tear. It left a bloody line down her face but she didn't move to wipe it away, and the blood continued to drip, drip, drip off. She was crying without blinking. It smelled so strongly of overripe strawberries Naru could taste them.

The monster charged at the immobile girl instead. "No!" cried Naru, and she grabbed at the monster's leg. "Don't you hurt her!"

It kicked Naru in the head and the impact roiled through her skull. She moaned at the pain but kept a hold on the thing's leg, close enough now to deliver a series of one-handed hits and punches. Anything to distract it from harming her friend.

It turned all of its attention back on Naru, kicking her off for good and crouching in some kind of half-standing position, the better to attack from. Naru scrambled back and picked up the wooden stake, holding it up like a policewoman might with a flashlight. The rectangular form of the poster stake morphed into a more rounded and comfortable fit in her hand as she held it aloft, with the point of it aimed right at the fanged creature. As it charged at her again, Naru charged right back and slammed the stake into the monster's chest. It burst into millions of tiny grains of sparkling dust.

She did it! Naru nimbly tossed the stake from one hand to the other.

Then the world fell down.

The ground rumbled, swirling lunar dust and sand, and a growing sinkhole started pulling everything down into it. The ruins, the dead woman's body, a nameless princess. No matter how fast Naru ran it seemed like the edge to an endless chasm was always right behind her.

She jumped up, impossibly high, and clutched the lotus top of a column. But it too sloped forward, the desiccated dirt beneath it crumbling down and disappearing. Naru clung to the top as it tipped further and further into the void.

_Onēsan_ circled around her again, padding on nothing but thin air. "You were never meant to walk this world," she said. Her mouth barely moved. Naru heard Princess D's voice dubbing over for the dark woman. "I give no more. If you want to fix this..." The woman trailed off, and then seemed in disbelief at what she finally advised:

"Keep friends."

At last the column tipped all the way over, and Naru fell into the black abyss. The last thing she saw while falling wasn't _onēsan's_ face, but that dark crystal. It hung suspended in place over the epicenter of the sinkhole, rotating, and winking the colors of the rainbow.

With a thunderclap, the whole setting then snapped back into place as if nothing had happened. Silent ruins in the dim light of the Earth and the stars. Princess D and Naru were gone; the only people left were the dead.

Moments later, an out-of-breath bushveld rain frog hopped to a boulder of fragmented marble. One of the dark spots on top of his head looked like an upside-down crescent moon. "NO! Princess D, I need my kiss! I swear I'm a real Prince, my name is Diamond too! Come back! Noooooooo!" But nobody heard, nobody cared, and he hopped away to dream of a different princess.

* * *

Naru jolted awake at the harsh ringing of her alarm. It was time to get up, get ready, go to school, and work hard to be a good student. It was a normal day.

But would her life ever be normal again?

She jumped out of bed and raced to the phone in the hallway. Dialing the hospital phone number she'd memorized, Naru tried to reason with herself. If someone had called sometime during the night, she would have heard it. No news was good news in this case. It had to be.

"_Moshi moshi_! You have reached -"

"Masato Sanjouin! Please, is he still alive?" The words rushed out of Naru all at once. Please, please let him have lived through the night.

"Are you a family member?"

"I'm the one that brought him in last night! Please, I just want to know how he is."

The night before – just hours ago, really - Dr. Mizuno had eventually come out of the operating suite to tell them Mr. Sanjouin was stable, and then she called a taxi to take the other girls home, even Ami. But Naru was left behind, with doctor's orders to have her hands treated.

Dr. Mizuno had first directed a subordinate to find Naru a clean pair of socks and shoes, maybe from the Lost & Found, or maybe from some nurse depository where they kept scrubs and other clothes. Then she had Naru go to another floor to have her hands cleaned, de-picked of remaining splinters, and slathered in first aid burn ointment. The way the nurse wrapped Naru's hands in sterile gauze looked to her eyes like she was preparing the girl for a boxing match.

There was some rustling on the other end of the phone, and the woman asked her name. Dr. Mizuno had promised to leave notes allowing one 'Naru Osaka' to be given a minimal update. "Please hold, miss, and I'll have someone check."

Naru held the phone away from her ear as 1970's lounge music suddenly came through. It was as loud as her alarm.

Her mother came around the corner. "Naru, what's going on? You're awfully busy for this hour of the morning."

"I'm on hold with the hospital, Mom."

Mrs. Osaka shook her head and went back to the kitchen. Her exasperated silence was a stark contrast to the maternal fury that had greeted Naru when she finally came home safe.

"_Where have you been?!_" she had yelled when Naru stepped through the door at almost 3AM in the morning. "I heard you shout, but when I went to your room it was filled with red gas and I passed out! I called the police as soon as I recovered; I thought Masato Sanjouin had gassed the room and kidnapped you!"

"I'm sorry Mom. I _was_ taken at first, by those monsters Sailor Moon fights, but I was rescued and we went to the hospital."

Mayumi Osaka had been one of the Dark Kingdom's earliest victims in Japan. Tokyo was supposed to be one of the safest cities in the world, let alone the country, but in the past half year it had become a supernatural hotspot. And apparently, so had her own daughter. She'd lost count of the number of times she had seen Naru in a brainwashed, hypnotized state, or near-unconscious from having _something_ drained from her; whether it was spirit energy or years of her life, Mrs. Osaka had no idea.

To say nothing of the dangers of a much older man – handsome and wealthy – interested in Naru. Such relationships were certainly more common and acceptable in Japan than other first-world countries, but convincing her daughter to leave home in the middle of the night and then sneak into the OSA*P store to steal a jewel worth one million yen was _not_ acceptable behavior. Mrs. Osaka hadn't been _at all_ placated when Naru had returned with it. The whole thing was probably just a test of loyalty, like how gangs operated.

"So you didn't see Mr. Sanjouin at all?"

"Well, I did -"

"Then you did sneak out!"

"No! Mom, I really was kidnapped, and Ne- and then he saved me!" Trying to keep everyone's secrets while explaining to her mother had been so confusing. Naru kept stuttering, and it only made her look like a liar. "And the Sailor Soldiers took us to the hospital."

"You couldn't call me from there?"

"I thought he would die!"

Then her mother had finally noticed Naru's appearance; her ripped clothing, mussed hair, and bandaged hands with faint bruising still around her wrists. "My god, what happened? Naru, did Sanjouin do this?"

"NO! He's the one who rescued me! He's a good person, Mom!"

"Then why do you always get in trouble when it comes to him? It's not safe to be out in the city alone Naru, you know that! It's even less safe after dark, and you're just a young girl. But one phone call from him and you're leaving in the middle of the night and stealing from our own store. You're turning into a teenage delinquent who's going to get killed, and it's _his_ influence!"

They went in circles, Naru becoming more inarticulate and emotional in between her arguments. Finally, her mother had just sent her off to bed.

It had taken forever to fall asleep. And she hadn't even dreamed of Nephrite.

The music clicked off. "Miss Osaka? I can tell you that Mr. Sanjouin is still in stable condition."

Air filled Naru's lungs all at once. Like she had just broke through the surface of the ocean from a long swim underwater. She longed to go back to the hospital and be by Nephrite's side, or to do _something_. It was almost a physical ache. Her palms began to itch, and she rubbed her hands together to scratch at the skin underneath the gauze.

In the kitchen after the phone call, mother and daughter were silent. Mrs. Osaka sipped at some tea. Naru gobbled down her breakfast, and then put some dinner leftovers in the toaster oven for more. She drank a full glass of orange juice. Her mother had no comment, and Naru still didn't know what to say.

Oh, you know that older man I love and that you can't stand? He's part of some supernatural evil organization. Remember Usagi, my sweet and clumsy best friend? She's Sailor Moon. And now I have superpowers too, Mom.

Well, maybe. Naru wasn't sure _what_ happened last night. How was she suddenly able to pull those branches out, when she couldn't minutes before? How was she able to throw one and hit that monster dead-on? Was it all adrenaline? But then who or what was that voice she heard? It wasn't even like hearing a person who was next to you but invisible. Naru had heard it... almost as if the voice was coming from within herself, like an inner voice. Could it be connected to the strange dream she just had? But how would she ever find out?

She scratched at her palms.

"I want you to come straight home from school. No arcade or ice cream with Usagi," her mother said, and Naru reluctantly agreed. She wanted to be there when Nephrite woke up, but it was a miracle she hadn't been grounded already.

Her thoughts were so consumed with the older man, that when she opened the door to leave for school it took a few moments to process the person standing there, one hand up and about to knock.

"Oh, er – hi Naru!" Usagi tilted her head to give an extra wide, cheery smile.

* * *

"You know, in some countries the weekend is a whole two days long. I think it's terribly unfair for Japan to make us go to school on a Saturday! When are we supposed to get our beauty sleep?"

Naru looped an arm around her best friend's elbow. "You seem to manage just fine getting some every 2nd period."

"Hey!"

The moment passed, and both girls walked in silence.

"Usagi..."

"Mm?"

"I'm really sorry I never noticed you were Sailor Moon before."

Usagi stopped and gaped, and Naru took a half step before realizing her arm wasn't moving along with her. "Wait, _you're_ sorry? What for? I'm _supposed_ to keep my identity secret."

"Yes, but I should have noticed something was up and tried to help. It can't be easy being a superhero when you also have to be a good student, and a good daughter, and a friend – I have trouble doing it and I'm not a superhero at all, just a constant target of all these stupid monsters. What if one of the times I teased you about being sleepy or not having your homework done was because you bravely faced a monster the night before? I hate the idea that I might have been cruel by accident."

The notion had only just come to Naru, but it felt right. And it was important, so she took both of Usagi's hands in her bandaged ones – it made them itch terribly, but Naru ignored that - and looked straight into her eyes. "I may not be able to destroy monsters into dust or karate kick them into the next life, but from now on, promise me that if there's anything I can do to help out, you'll let me know. I'd never forgive myself if you get hurt because you're worried about make-up tests when you should be concentrating on fighting. The smallest thing could get you killed, Usagi! Last night proves that. Please, just let me be there for you."

Usagi's eyes grew watery. "Oh Naru... you're the most kindhearted friend a girl could ask for." The heartfelt sentiment was palpable between both girls – a little brave, a little sad, and kind of grown up.

Then she burst into tears, and the Usagi-Fountain clutched at Naru for dear life. "That's more what I'm used to," Naru grinned, and hugged her emotional friend back. _Hold on to Akiko._ The strange line from her strange dream echoed in her mind.

When Usagi finally calmed down she listened, enraptured, as Naru told her the full story.

How Nephrite had come to her balcony –

"Like Romeo and Juliet!"

– and how she'd been kidnapped –

"Like Princess Peach!"

– when Nephrite arrived to rescue her –

"Like Tuxedo Mask!"

\- well, without the tuxedo –

"Not like Tuxedo Mask then, the outfit and the cape are what make it so dashing."

– and how they sought refuge in the trees of the park.

"Oh, so _that's_ what you were doing in the park," said Usagi.

"What did you think we were there for?"

"I don't know! Luna saw you get carried away by a youma - that's what those monsters from the Dark Kingdom are called - and Sailor Mercury's computer tracked you to the forest in the middle of the night. Nephrite could have been seducing you for all we knew!"

Naru's entire face went almost as red as her hair. Usagi practically cackled in response. "There was nothing of the sort!"

"But he _did_ take his jacket off. Just what were you two doing before those youma showed up?"

"Nothing!"

"Come on Naru, now that you know I'm Sailor Moon I can tell you everything! You have to share everything with me in return!"

"There's nothing to share! Even – even if there were something to tell, I'm not about to shout it out on a public street!"

"So what you're saying is, I need to have a good old fashioned sleepover interrogation. Oh, I'm on it! Tonight, you and me, just like we used to have. I think if I ask super nicely Mom will give me some change for root beer float supplies, and some pizza, and a video rental from Tsutaya..."

Naru sighed. Maybe she'd get lucky and her mother would ground her after all.

"It's not like we were there for very long. I wrapped a cut on his arm, and we talked a little, but then – then those monsters attacked. And I was _so close_, Usagi. He shoved me out of the way but I saw all those giant thorns go right through Nephrite. I could feel the force of them going through his body like paper. And it's my fault he was distracted."

"Naru, you don't know that."

"Yes, I do. They mocked him for being a traitor, for falling in love with a human. They were going to kill him for it."

Usagi scratched at the back of her neck, and looked sideways at Naru. "Do you think Nephrite has fallen in love with you for real then?"

"I – I don't know. I mean, is it a given when he was ready to sacrifice himself for me? I know he cares about me, even if he hasn't told me he loves me." Nephrite himself had said he was just a liar. It was hard to judge whatever he said – even if his actions said something very definitive. But movies and magazines had taught Naru that even regular men had trouble saying those three little words. She could be patient.

"Well, I'm sure it means something. And I think that's amazing, Naru, really, that you could get through to someone like that. Maybe now he'll want to leave the Dark Kingdom and work with us, or at least stop fighting us and draining people's energy. Just be careful, okay? Even if he loves you, Nephrite has one heck of an evil origin story."

"I will. I want to help him with that, anyway. I don't think it's any safer for him working for an evil organization, this Dark Kingdom, than it is for the innocent people it attacks. Or for you and the Sailor Soldiers who fight their monsters. Youma. Maybe I - hold on a second. _Luna_ saw me get carried away?"

Usagi winced. "Oops. I was supposed to keep that part a secret."

"Uh-huh. What happened to sharing everything?"

"Okay, okay!"

Then it was Usagi's turn to tell her tale. Of the day when a cat started talking to her, and gave her a magical transformation brooch –

"I wondered where you got that, I thought maybe you had come back and bought it at my mom's sale that day!"

– of leading a super _sentai_ group in real life –

"In miniskirts instead of battle armor?"

"Hey, I didn't pick the outfits, I just throw the tiara."

– and searching for a mysterious princess from a shadowy past –

"Oh, so you're the Mario in this situation!"

"Unforgivable, Naru."

– all while fighting alongside the enigmatic Tuxedo Mask.

"You _do_ know a little of how I feel, then," said Naru.

"I guess." Usagi shrugged. "Luna and the others don't trust him because they don't know him, but I don't think that's enough to call him our enemy. Especially since he's never attacked ordinary citizens, and he always comes to my rescue."

"And you don't know Sailor V at all?" Naru asked. Usagi shook her head.

"Yeah, I think it's weird too. We have such similar names and uniforms! But Luna doesn't know her, and I was the first to awaken."

"There seems to be a lot that Luna doesn't know..."

A loud bell rang from a dozen blocks away.

"Oh no!" cried Usagi.

"That's the first bell!" Naru cried after her. They had completely stopped walking to lean on a fence while talking.

Both girls started running.

"Okay, rule one!" Naru huffed. "We can't stop moving on our way to school no matter the conversation!"

"Wha-a-a-t?" Usagi's voice was far, far behind her.

Naru turned her head to shout for Usagi to hurry up, and therefore wasn't paying 100% attention to the path in front of her. That was how she reasoned crashing into a guy three times her size and knocking him down and back a few feet.

"YEOWCH, that hurt!"

Naru blinked. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Are you - OW!" She stumbled and then turned to see Usagi sitting on the pavement behind her, after running into Naru and falling down herself. "What am I today, a car crash dummy in a human pile-up?"

"I oughta pile YOU up, you broke my leg!"

Paying attention now, Naru saw there were not one, but three very large and muscular men in their way, one of them on the ground clutching his shin.

The one wearing sunglasses and still standing frowned at them. When he tried to stride over to Usagi, Naru blocked his way. A new yet strangely familiar feeling bubbled inside of her. It went beyond her normal protective instinct and stubbornness. It felt hot and restless; like it would collect in her hand if she made a fist.

She tamped it down.

"We're very sorry for running into you. It was an accident; please, we're just trying to get to school."

"Tell that to my leg!" said the guy Naru ran into.

"If you're injured you should call an ambulance. A couple of middle school girls can't help you with that," Naru said, lying about her first aid skills. She didn't care for these punks, and every second she and Usagi stayed the chances of them being late to school went up.

"Naw, I think you definitely owe us some _help_," said Sunglasses, leaning into Naru's space and over Usagi's trembling frame.

And then a superheroine saved them.

"She said sorry," a new voice spoke up. "I saw the whole thing, boys. Someone her size running right into you isn't enough to break bones. That's pretty low, trying to con a couple of innocent girls."

Naru and Usagi both peered around the crewcut of the third guy, to see the most confident – and maybe the tallest – teenage girl they'd ever met literally standing up for them. She wore a white and brown colored school uniform, and had a high ponytail of light brown hair.

Of course, then the guys' anger turned on her. "What's that?" said Sunglasses, and, "How dare you!" Crewcut exclaimed. He cut in front of his friend and clenched his fists for show. "No one ever talks to us like that!"

Naru watched in dread as the man, sporting the biggest muscles she'd ever seen in real life, reached out to the other girl to deliver some kind of physical beatdown.

But instead the girl caught his wrist and flipped him to the ground, _hard_, like he weighed nothing at all. The man groaned but didn't get up.

"Why you -!"

At Sunglasses's outburst and clear move to charge the girl, Naru decided not to wait, and gave her best dancing high kick straight to his crotch. He squealed at a decibel that normally only Usagi could reach and fell down face first clutching, well, himself.

"Whoa!" said the tall girl. "Nicely done!"

"Thanks! You too!" Naru grabbed Usagi's arm and pulled her along. The third guy checked both of his buddies, out for the count on the sidewalk, and booked it out of there. So much for his broken leg. "Come on, we have to get to school!"

"You girls take care!" the other girl called after them.

"Bye!" Usagi called back, although too faintly to be heard by her. She had a light blush on her cheeks that wasn't from their racing, and a distant look in her eyes. "So cool..."

"Should I tell Tuxedo Mask you've found someone else to save you from now on?"

"Wha – NARU!"

* * *

Despite the excitement of their morning adventure, Naru was distracted all the way through 4th period. None of the gossip about the new girl at school reached her brain. She forgot to poke Usagi awake from her nap before the teacher could call on her to answer a question. Her notes were nothing but random doodle hearts and trying to spell out Nephrite's name in _katakana_.

During lunch period she left Usagi to go to the library. Using the librarian's phone to call the hospital again had the same result – Nephrite was in stable condition, and there was no other update for her.

Sitting at a table in the library, Naru wasn't allowed to eat but she didn't feel hungry anyway. She had a mathematics book open in front of her, but didn't read any of it. She thought of a conversation between a set of curtains and a sliding glass door, a nocturnal shadow and a deep voice the only evidence of a presence. As soon as Naru had opened her curtains, Nephrite wasn't there anymore. Could she wait for him to get better on his own, contact her on his own? Was it safe? Was he actually healing? With that green blood, maybe 'stable condition' wasn't healthy at all. What if Japanese X-Files agents came for him? Naru wasn't anybody important, but Masato Sanjouin was.

The last lunch bell rang, and it seemed to Naru to match the sound of her heartbeat, and the sound of her blood pumping. She leisurely collected her bookbag and walked out of the library. She walked down the hall, greeting classmates and waving to them along the way. She kept her head up and moved self-assuredly. A teaching assistant passed her in a hallway on the first floor, and Naru half bowed and half nodded at him while continuing on her way. He didn't ask her anything.

And then, she was outside of the school and on her way to the nearest bus stop to take her to the hospital. If her mother found out, she'd say she hadn't been feeling well and went to rest in the nurse's office. How easy it suddenly was to come up with lies to her family, yet Naru knew it was for the best. This was too important; Nephrite was too important for her to stay away.

She remembered how hard it had been for her to leave in the first place, in the dark hours of that very morning.

"NO!" Naru shrieked, and backed away from the surgeons and security guards. She held her arms ramrod straight at her sides, her bandaged hands making loose fists. They'd humored her, at first, when she refused to leave the building and get into a taxi already paid to take her home. Their humor had dissolved quickly enough at her stubbornness.

"Mr. Sanjouin is stable for now," Dr. Mizuno said. "You should go home. We can tell him who rescued him after being attacked by some street robbers when he wakes, although you shouldn't have been out at night. Don't stay here just because you're afraid to face your parents coming home so late."

"I can't just leave him!"

Two security men edged forward, but stopped at the single raised hand of Dr. Mizuno. "If I promise to contact you if his condition changes, will you let the taxi take you home without any more fuss?"

Naru thought about it. "I want to see him," she said.

Dr. Mizuno considered the hysterical teenager in front of her. Not for nothing, she had had risen to Chief of Surgery in a metropolitan hospital while under a patriarchal society, and at the same time raised - by herself - the greatest student on record in all of Japan. Something more was going on with her daughter's school friend and the mysterious Mr. Sanjouin than she was privy to. "I'll give you five minutes," she finally declared, and Naru followed her to the separate recovery room.

Nephrite was still deathly pale and his eyes were closed, but despite being hooked up in multiple ways he wasn't intubated. She could see the slight rise and fall of his chest. She missed the deep blueness of his eyes. Naru leaned in to his ear – close enough to give him a kiss on the cheek if she'd wanted - and whispered that it was safe now. He could come back.

On the way out, Naru slipped away from the medical assistants that were supposed to be chaperoning her. She found her way back to the emergency room where they had operated on Nephrite. A lone janitor was mopping up. He gave her a quick once-over, and then shrugged and went back to work.

It didn't look like a bloodbath. Naru wondered whether that was because Dr. Mizuno and her team were that good, or whether green colored blood just didn't show up on blue and green tiles the way bright red did. A round metal dish had a mountain of used gauze, soaked deep in green all the way through. Some tools were in a flat metal pan with little globs and blobs of green on them. There, on the floor – a partial sneaker print in green. The room smelled strongly of industrial disinfectant, but Naru could still make out the metallic aftertaste of blood in the air. Nephrite's blood.

Her improvised orange bandage, hastily knotted and flecked with green, was in a trashcan. It had been cut through in a straight line, probably by surgical shears, and discarded along with the rest of the medical waste.

Now she was heading back to Nephrite, unable to stay away.

Back at Juuban Middle School, the very same girl who'd fought beside Naru that morning was formally introduced to the class 6 homeroom.

Usagi frowned when she noticed her best friend wasn't there to meet her new friend, Makoto Kino: maker of scrumptious lunch treats, seamstress of super cute lunch bags, defender of the innocent. She liked that everyone seemed to be joining her at school. Rei could stay where she was, though.

"Class," the teacher called, as bright midday sunlight streamed through open windows. It shone onto the painted walls of the classroom, the natural red highlights in the new girl's hair, and the clean linoleum floor. "Please welcome our new transfer student!"

* * *

"I know everyone at T.A. Academy will welcome her," said the teacher, and gestured to the unremarkable new girl standing next to her. "In-dee-ah Ko-henno, our newest student," she pronounced somewhat incorrectly.

The students' curious confusion at the new girl's strange name and presence was resolved when the girl took a piece of paper out of her pocket, and finally lifted her head enough so that her face could be seen. In halting Japanese, the girl at the front of the class read: "Hello. My name is... India Cohen. I am... American. My father is... commander... United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka. We... move to Japan. I am happy... to be classmate."

She shoved the paper back into her pocket and stared at the hardwood floor.

There was an awkward beat, before the teacher instructed her to take a seat. The new girl didn't move at first, and the teacher had to gesture to the open desk for her to understand.

With her head down, India didn't meet the eyes of any of the other girls as she paced to the only free seat in the classroom. For once, every desk in the room was occupied by a student. She sat next to a girl that normally didn't have any schoolgirl sitting by her. In front and back of her, yes; and to the other side was one of the narrow windows. But no classroom seat neighbor.

At first India tried to pay attention, but it was pointless. She barely understood Japanese so she couldn't even take notes. Instead she took in the details of the classroom. Except for some new electrical wiring, it looked unchanged since the school was founded at the turn of the century, with antique wood paneling and Breadin style desk-and-chair sets of scrolling iron. And of course, a hefty wooden cross at the head of the room, on the wall behind the teacher. It was a Catholic school, after all.

Kit had explained; it would be better for her this way. Easier access to crosses, holy water, spellbooks, and any other supplies she might need. Since most of teachers and some of the students lived there in dorms they counted as homes. So there was that protection as well, if she ever needed it. India had originally been set for a regular middle school in Juuban, but then Kit pulled some strings and gotten her enrolled here instead.

Her father had barely glanced at the official paperwork when it arrived, priority hand delivered by an officer. He signed off where red arrow stickers told him to without missing a beat in the argument he'd been having with her mother. Nothing was amiss to either of them. An elite, private, all girls' academy was more their style anyway.

She'd gotten the uniform just in time, but looking around she could tell she stuck out. Everyone else had perfectly straight hair, black or very dark brown, and neatly styled with cute headbands or clips. Most of them kept it short as well, around shoulder length. The ends of their hair hung in an orderly line, as if they had all just gotten a fresh trim. India moved a hand over her head, as if that would somehow smooth down the little frizzy strands of her wavy hair. She usually just gathered the mass of it all into a single ponytail.

Only one other girl had hair as long as India – longer, even. The girl next to her, the one who didn't have a sideways seat mate until India arrived. She looked what India thought was classically Japanese, with pin-straight black hair long enough to pool at her waist while she sat in her chair, totally zit-free skin, and big monolid eyes. She was a very pretty girl.

Then she caught India watching, and India quickly looked back to her notebook, cheeks burning. Why did she have to be so weird? Wasn't her life already and unwillingly weird enough, without choosing to stare at people who wouldn't want to be her friend now? She made random doodles in her notebooks to pass the time, exaggerated fangs on faces and ink hearts with "I+K" inside them.

The reverse action happened as well, when India was brave enough to raise her head and look around. The other students were clearly sneaking their own glances at her, but then turning their heads as soon as she caught them staring. Maybe there was something to adapting the "stupid _gaijin_" personality after all, instead of trying to fit in. By lunchtime India felt desperate enough to make another attempt, and when that girl to her side stood up India leapt to her feet. "Hahji-memash-tay!" she greeted, way too loud and completely wrong on the vowels. "India Cohen _de-suh_!" And she bowed sharply with her entire upper torso.

The girl said something in Japanese which, by the tone of her voice, probably meant, "Yeah, I know." India cringed, remembering too late that she'd been officially introduced to the class only a few hours ago.

But then the girl kind of huffed and shook her head, like she was used to dealing with airheads like India all the time, and pointed to herself while saying her name. Hee-no? No, India recalled; in Japan the family name went first. Rei. Her name was Rei Hino.

Since the school was Western styled, there was a cafeteria for lunch, instead of students eating in their classrooms. India followed Rei to the counter, the daily menu handwritten on the clapboards hanging above them with cute little designs of sea creatures and dumplings. When it was her turn to order, India took a moment, and then just pointed to Rei's tray until the servers understood she wanted the same things.

Rei seemed fine with letting India follow her to an empty table and sit with her to eat. The little dishes of food looked like nothing but seasoned rice, pickled vegetables in broth, and grilled tofu, so India dug in. It would probably look weird to have seconds of lunch; she'd have to start eating a bigger breakfast every morning.

She knew not to rub her wood chopsticks together or stick them upright in food like incense at a funeral, but it was still surprising to hear the Japanese girl say, "_Warukunai ne!_" in an approving tone.

"Huh?" said India.

Rei pointed with her free hand at the way India held her chopsticks, then clicked her own, and smiled just a little. India's cheeks burned again; well of course, she _would_ be adept at using wooden stakes, wouldn't she?

Just then, both of them noticed as a pack of girls approached. They were leisurely in their pursuit, and there would be no escape from their attention.

"_Nandeshou_?" asked Rei, indignantly, to the leader of the group of girls when they arrived at the table.

"You should speak English, the new girl obviously doesn't understand," said the ringleader. She had an accent to India's ears, but one of over-enunciation, and was clearly fluent in English. Once she sat down, so did all the other girls. "I'm Chizuru. Nice to meet you!"

India mumbled a reply. She was never good at figuring this out.

Chizuru took her plastic drink straw and pierced the tiny foil circle on top of her milk box one handed. "You're half Asian, yes? But not Japanese, obviously. So what are you?"

Gemini, on the cusp of Cancer, thought India. "My mom is Filipino," she said. That set the girls off, giggling _ohhh,_ _firi-pino_ at each other, raising their eyebrows and metaphorical noses at her.

"We never get new girls in the middle of the semester. The academy has very strict entrance requirements. Your father must be very important to get you into the school this late," said Chizuru. India only shrugged.

"Rei's father is very important too. He doesn't see her very often though," said Chizuru, and Rei made a face when she heard her own name. To know someone was badmouthing you right in front of you, but in a language you didn't understand, was a special kind of exclusion. "Most people think it's because of Rei's _abilities_. She has visions – or so I've heard. A while back people went missing from the shrine she works at, but she didn't help the police or anything. So maybe she's just lying for attention."

Chizuru calmly sipped at her milk while Rei glared. Something in India's chest lightened its grip when hearing about Rei's visions. She wondered if they happened the same way India received hers, in dreams. She wished she could tell Rei she believed her. She knew the police weren't equipped to handle certain situations.

One of the other girls said something, and Chizuru nodded. "Are you planning to attend the autumn dance? It's with our sibling school for boys. Japanese guys are probably different than what you're used to."

"I'm not used to anything," India said, quietly defending herself.

"No? But all girls want a boyfriend. Aren't you interested in catching a nice Japanese husband?"

At that, India felt caught. They didn't deserve to know, but – her heart belonged to someone already.

The girls chatter changed as an administrator walked up to the lunch table. Chizuru seemed surprised that the purpose was to deliver a message for India: "A Mr. _Boat-Weru_ has arrived to take you home for the rest of the day. He says it is a family matter?"

India jumped, literally jumped up, at the escape. "Um, see you tomorrow?" she said to Rei, who of course had no idea what she was saying. She felt a little guilty at leaving her there, but what else could she do? Rei was more experienced at dealing with the other students anyway.

Outside the front of the school was a plain black car with tinted windows, and India walked halfway around it before remembering that they drove on the other side of the road in Japan. She climbed into the correct passenger seat, and came face to face with the very British, very handsome Christopher "Kit" Bothwell. Just meeting his eyes for a second had her looking down to catch her breath.

"How was your first day?" he asked in his posh accent. India didn't answer. "We can still do that language comprehension spell, if you've changed your mind."

She drew in a shaky breath. India didn't want to talk about her simple schoolgirl problems with him. "What's the situation?"

Kit had no trouble driving, what with the traffic direction the same as his homeland, and his concentration on the road let India study his profile while he spoke. He was only eight years older than her. Some days that felt like nothing, and other days it was a chasm in front of her. "There's some kind of demon at a nearby hospital. Police chatter reported it early, but response has been slow – slower than normal."

"What kind?"

"I'm not sure. I've prepared quite the stockpile in the boot for us. Personally, I'm hoping for an _onmoraki_. Bird demons are so rare; I think it has something to do with their descension from dinosaurs. In any case, it's a change of pace from the usual nocturnal activity."

"Lucky us."

"Lucky for the patients and civilians." They came to a red light, and Kit put his hand on India's shoulder and looked her in the eye. "_They're_ the ones that are lucky, because _you're_ here. Between whatever police task force they'd eventually put together, after enough people died or made a fuss, and maybe some magically talented good Samaritans in the know, I'm certain this demon would be defeated in the end. But how many days would it take? How many innocent lives killed in the meantime? They don't know how lucky they are to have you right here. We might even be done by supper."

He turned back to the windshield as the light turned green. The imprint of his palm on her skin, even through the layers of her blouse and blazer, was still warm to India. And she felt so _guilty_ – it was an honor and a calling to Kit, their work. But for her there was only dread. She felt like an imposter who just got lucky every time she fought for her life and won.

And she hoped, like always, that her luck wouldn't run out that day.

to be continued...

**Author's Note:** Shout out to my newest beta reader Blue Andie! I have multiple beta readers and I am so grateful to them for their hard work editing my crap. You guys are the reason this story is turning out so well. :)


	5. We'll Go Hand in Hand

Chapter 4: I Think You'll Understand (We'll Go Hand in Hand)

* * *

They were _gone_. The splinter wounds, the blisters, the burn marks, all of it.

Naru's hands had finally felt so itchy that as soon as she stepped off the bus, she went to the nearest trashcan and unwrapped her bandages. Maybe the fresh air could provide some relief. If not, she was about to enter a hospital anyway.

Her hands were completely healed. The dried-out fibers of the material had been scraping over her normal skin.

Naru wanted to believe it was just another superpower. That made sense, didn't it? Super strength and super healing. It had nothing to do with something magically erasing evidence of everything that happened the night before. That was nonsense, it had to be; the effects were all, well, still affecting her life. She'd have to mend her orange pajamas, but the blood would probably never get out. She'd get to hear all about Sailor Moon's latest escapades from the source herself from now on. And when she entered the right room in the hospital building up ahead, Nephrite would be alive and waiting for her.

Everything felt different. But everything would be all right once she could see him.

Naru focused on walking, and not running, around the outskirts of the utilitarian medical buildings until she found the same entrance as the night before. The door was a little stuck, but it eventually opened up to let her in. There was the same elevator, larger than normal, even for a hospital. And no up or down call buttons. Ugh.

The lobby area was empty. Naru waited a few minutes but no one came back to the desk. Peering over the beige counter as far as manners allowed, she also didn't see any kind of remote button. Double-ugh! The stairs, then.

Naru stopped at each floor, exiting on each one and walking around the same washed-out corridors. She peered into hall closets, storage areas, tiny lunch spaces and nurse changing areas, operating theaters, and rooms with beds half made up and the monitors still beeping. The only locked doors had round windows up top, and if Naru jumped she could just make out what looked like rows of all kinds of medications. It was a very boring, but very empty labyrinth, and since nothing was familiar yet Naru kept moving. If only she'd paid attention to the floor number last night, or remembered the number of Nephrite's recovery room. If only the employees had enough respect for their jobs and could have stayed at the desk to show her how to use the elevator!

There was something that felt too empty about the entire building. She hadn't run into a single person so far, although the power was still on and machinery and electronics still hummed. If they had actually evacuated, for something like a scary disease or a bomb, surely the government would have sealed off the building and she wouldn't have been able to get inside in the first place.

As she rounded corners and retraced hallways, Naru tried not to think of a thought she'd just thought up: that Nephrite's room would also be empty when she got there. That she would never see him again, without even a body to say goodbye to. Gone with no explanation just like the wounds on her hands she'd earned saving him.

And then, as she walked by yet another doorway, no different than the rest –

There he was.

He didn't notice her, not at first. His eyes were open and he was clearly awake. But more than that, Nephrite had a deep, almost over-exaggerated scowl on his face. Lost in thought and thoroughly aggravated; at what, she didn't know. She never knew she could be so happy to see another person upset, because it meant they were _alive_. Naru stood very still and quiet, holding on to the moment of her relief and joy, and Nephrite's lively irritation. Like two sides of a lucky coin.

He was really, truly alive, and so wonderfully human in her opinion, no matter what color his blood was.

She could have stood there for ages, watching the unguarded emotions play out on his face, until Nephrite suddenly saw her standing in the doorway. Those blue eyes made the same startled, unsure expression at her presence they had made the night before.

Naru had no idea what she was going to say, but the whole world was already vivid and wonderful for her once again.

* * *

_Earlier That Morning_

Nephrite regained consciousness in slow, staggered stages. He wasn't in terrible pain anymore, but there were strange gaps in his thoughts. He'd finish a thought only to realize he'd dozed off between the beginning of cogitation and the completion of it, with the sense of time passing only happening long after the fact.

By the time he could think clearly it was obvious he was in a human hospital. He was alive. He was alive! Somehow, the human doctors had managed to keep him alive despite his unique physiology and grave injuries.

He wasn't a physician but surviving hundreds of years in the Dark Kingdom meant Nephrite had picked up some medical knowledge by necessity. Even if the energy drain had stopped when the branches came out, he'd been in a severely weakened state with a sizable hole in his chest. There would've been multiple complications, all feeding into each other, trying their best to kill him. But he was alive!

He'd laugh, if he could. Nephrite's energy was nearly depleted, no more than that of an average human man who'd just been gored through and almost died. It took an enormous amount of strength and willpower to simply roll his left hand. He couldn't move his right arm at all, though that was unsurprising. A watchful nurse came to his side to feed him sips of water by straw from a cup, and Nephrite managed to get across that he didn't want a higher dose of painkillers. He needed to be as alert as possible – because he was trapped. Trapped by his own drained and damaged body, unable to walk out of a mere human hospital under his own power, no better than just Masato Sanjouin.

And he'd gladly pretend at being a simple rich playboy, if not for the fact that the Dark Kingdom still had agents on Earth, least of all Zoisite. That treacherous, histrionic, _petty thief_. Oh, he'd be celebrating right now with Kunzite, but soon he'd notice that three of his prized youma were gone. Then it was only a matter of time until Zoisite discovered 'Sanjouin' was still alive, weak and easy to assassinate for real this time. Nephrite had maybe days at most until he found himself in the exact same situation as before – in danger from the Dark Kingdom.

Naru would be in danger as well. A nearby monitor trilled an alarm at the too-sharp rise in his heartbeat and medical personnel came rushing in. Then he had to suffer further humiliation from humans poking and prodding at him, telling him to relax.

If only he could drain their energy! Nephrite had tried, the night before – but he was so weak that it was only possible if he were touching someone skin-to-skin. Worse, they were all garbed in medical gear from their fingertips to their necks, with even more covering their mouths. And there were just too many of them. His desperate attempts at trying to grab whoever's face was closest hadn't ended well for him, and the last thing he remembered was the indignity of being forcibly held down like an animal.

No. That was a lie. That hadn't been his last thought at all. When he felt the oncoming rip current of unconsciousness, of what should have been his death, Nephrite had clutched to the memory of _her_.

The bright orange binding Naru had created from her own pajama top with her own two hands was gone, replaced with a standard version in sterile white gauze. He felt – he wasn't sure what he felt at that. Panic? Sorrow? Over a used bandage, ridiculous. It must be lingering effects from the human drugs.

"I ask for power from the stars," he rasped when they finally left him alone. A faint ripple of power passed over him, enough to take the place of the human, mind-clouding painkillers he had refused and speed along his healing. That was all. Nephrite's stellar powers were greatest in the celestial focal point he'd created in the former chapel of his mansion base. And he could always call forth power under the bare night sky, like the time Zoisite's youma lackey had attacked Naru thinking she had the silver crystal. But under so many layers of steel and concrete, Nephrite had reduced access. He didn't even have the strength to conjure an illusion.

About an hour after waking up, a poised woman walked in the room, wearing a white coat over a sensible but expensive skirt suit. A small team trailed her. "Good morning Mr. Sanjouin, I'm Dr. Mizuno. You've regained consciousness earlier than we expected."

He had to use what little energy he still retained to play at being Masato. He was incredibly grateful to Dr. Mizuno and her staff for their surgical skills. No, he didn't see who attacked him. No, he didn't remember meeting or being rescued by a few teenage girls – he was out for a walk alone. Yes, he was grateful for the privacy the hospital afforded him, and once he contacted his secretary he'd then provide appropriate – _generous_ – compensation.

Nephrite was bemused at that last part, since they apparently assumed he was associated with the yakuza. His actual interaction with them only went as far as whatever subcontracting Sanjouin Enterprises did at the Tokyo branch with yakuza-run businesses, to keep the Japanese crime syndicate pacified and out of his hair. And at double the price what a normal businessman would pay; even with a proper Japanese alias and a complex language spell to ensure fluency, the thousand-year-old mage was just _gaijin_ to them.

He spared a thought for poor, pathetic Jadeite, still trapped in Eternal Sleep. Even with his blond hair the other King was of obvious Asian descent. His ability to blend in with Japanese society, a new cover identity every week, had been a factor in all of his schemes on Earth. His _failed_ schemes.

Little wonder Nephrite had succeeded where Jadeite hadn't – he didn't _want_ to blend in. He was always meant to stand out in a crowd. Wasn't that the purpose of a King? They were three out of four, now. It wasn't impossible anymore to dream of a future of a singular _rex regnant_ – even if he had to deal with a sorceress queen.

But there could still be trouble if anyone contacted Nephrite's quasi-shell company to inform them of his 'ill health', for the same reason he couldn't just call them to send a company car to transport Nephrite to his warded base. Not everyone who worked for him was human, brainwashed or otherwise. Loyal servants might have turned the moment Zoisite acquired his Dark Crystal. He brought his attention back to the doctor, who had to repeat her question.

"Mr. Sanjouin, are you on any sulpha drugs?"

He went for a charming yet hapless smile. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know what those are."

Dr. Mizuno gave him a brief rundown of a class of antimicrobials not commonly used in developed countries, the overdosing of which would cause bright green blood coloring. Perhaps a distinguished businessman such as himself would want to find a confidential way of treating a certain condition – epilepsy, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS.

He couldn't shrug, but he managed a lazy blink of both eyes. "Well, unless someone's been secretly drugging me without me noticing, no to all of those."

"Then you won't mind if we conduct some further blood tests? It's crucial that we avoid giving you anything that could induce an allergic or toxic reaction."

The blood pressure machine blipped a spike, incongruent with Masato Sanjouin's bland expression.

"We won't do anything without your permission," Dr. Mizuno reassured him. "But it would be best to begin testing to provide you with the absolute best in health care."

Nephrite thought fast. "I've been stabbed a little too much for my tastes lately." He motioned with his chin towards his right side where he'd been gored through. "Forgive me if I'm not so keen to undergo it again so soon, even if is done by your expert hands."

He had no idea what their tests would find in his own nephrite-colored blood. All the Kings of the Dark Kingdom had their own physical anomalies - at least he'd inferred so over the last thousand years in their forced solitude together - but he was the only one with green blood. He'd never cared enough to research it before, something he regretted now.

He could be quarantined and put under strict surveillance. He could be handed over to some discreet branch of government for testing. And in the meantime, whether Nephrite's torture was passive or purposeful, he wouldn't get the chance to recover and renew his strength. He wouldn't be able to defend himself against his enemies, mortal or otherwise, when they came for him.

"I must insist, Mr. Sanjouin—"

"_No_," he said. A little too curt, more himself than Sanjouin, too obvious for the medical staff not to notice.

"But ask me again tomorrow," he followed up. Nephrite could at least stall by giving the illusion of possible obedience. Not exactly a lion trapping them in a falling elevator, but he'd take his victories where he could.

Dr. Mizuno finished their conversation by checking his bandages, a little surprised but pleased that he seemed to be healing well already.

The hours dragged on. He fell asleep in fits and starts, telling himself it was to help replenish his own energy but dreading being unconscious without a single ward or protection around him. It was hard to keep track of the people that came in his room because he was so tired; sometimes his observation of people only lasted a few seconds, and they seemed more like people from a dream than personnel actually there.

An overly cheerful assistant nurse, who tried again to compel him to offer up a vein for collection. A lone medical student with long green hair just to take notes on his condition. She didn't even speak to him. A different assistant to change the dressings on his chest and back. Lunch was a single serving of miso broth through a wide straw.

And then there was – _the incident_.

"What do you mean, 'change my catheter?'" Nephrite challenged the nurse. His mind raced – he knew _kathíemi_, ancient Greek for 'to descend,' so maybe something to drain fluid from him. But the only thing plugged into his body was the IV drip, and that was putting saline and medication _into_ his bloodstream. "What catheter?"

* * *

An assistant nurse walking down the hall startled at the noise of a sudden howl like nothing she'd ever heard before from a human being, and then an impressive string of cursing in what sounded like Japanese, English, and something else.

"**_GET OUT!_**" a man roared, hard enough to make the whiteboards on the walls rattle.

She scrambled to the nearest phone to call security, but a nurse ran out of the room ahead and waved her down. Carrying two – _two?_ \- catheters, she told the assistant, "YOU help that man from now on, I'm busy!"

Who would have thought such a handsome young man would have that much of a temper? Then again, the wealthy had their quirks. When the assistant brought in a bedpan for him, he grabbed it and threw it at her head. She was later told, by more experienced nurses, to be thankful it wasn't used at the time.

* * *

Humiliation was the most exciting thing to happen to Nephrite all day. They finally, _finally_ seemed to respect his wishes since nobody bothered him again, not even to pass by his open doorway.

He would still erase all of their memories the first chance he got.

The experience of fatigue and boredom was a two-headed kind of suffering to Nephrite. He almost missed the kind of torture sessions Queen Beryl would dole out when she was truly angry. They never lasted long, meant to punish and not to kill, but they set every nerve ending on fire. The few times it happened to Nephrite he'd always been mobile enough to teleport back to his quarters when she finished, even if the pain lingered for days.

In his feeble state, trying and failing to think of an escape plan, it took Nephrite a while to notice a figure lingering at the door of his private room. The monitor noted when his heart skipped a beat, but it wasn't a youma come to finish him off.

It was Naru.

* * *

She looked down first. "I hope it's all right that I came to visit you. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay."

Nephrite considered it. The stupid hospital gown looked ridiculous on him, with strange and intimate gaps for medical access. At least he had a blanket that covered him up to his torso. He'd gone longer without bathing during certain stints in the Dark Kingdom, but he'd only gotten a superficial sponge bath since being admitted so who knew what he smelled like. Stars knew what his _hair_ looked like. And then there was how weak he was – anyone could see he was physically and strategically beaten. Was such embarrassment worth her company?

"Sure," he croaked, and then tried to clear his throat.

Up close Naru could see dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was a little grey. And his hair – best not to comment. He was still the most handsome man she'd ever seen. "I didn't think to bring you anything. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"How are you feeling?"

Nephrite downright snorted, feeling cynical. "Fantastic. I could go for a pick-up game of tennis right now."

Naru smiled. "The real you is still very charming."

"Now you're the one lying."

She wanted to touch his face, or maybe just his arm, but even though they'd been much closer before it suddenly seemed presumptuous. "I'm so glad you're alive, Nephrite. I don't know what I would have done if you—"

Naru had to stop. He was right there in front of her, alive and talking, but the very thought made her throat close up. He'd been so close to dying. It felt like the specter of some other reality, one where Nephrite was just a cold corpse because of her, hung right over this one and she couldn't escape the dead weight of it.

Nephrite went to raise his left hand to her, but all he managed to do was to bang it on the rail of the hospital bed, jostling the peripheral IV line at the same time. He grimaced at the sting and his own weakness. How the mighty King of the Western Cardinal had fallen. Trying again only provided the same result, and he actually started to growl under his breath, but then Naru put her hand on his to still him. A warm, strong grip.

Before he even realized what he was doing, Nephrite had opened his palm to link hands properly with her. It was like a reflex.

He saw a flush spread across her pretty face, even though she didn't let up her grasp. Such a large response to the smallest touch. Well. He certainly wasn't unaware of the majestic effect he usually had on women. And some men. Nephrite had used his considerable looks and charms in both the human realm and the Dark Kingdom to achieve his goals. Making use of every possible resource he had was part of the reason he hadn't just survived in the Dark Kingdom, but thrived there and then on Earth.

Still... Naru didn't belong to that group anymore. That group of people, youma or human, who he had manipulated, tricked, brainwashed, or just brute forced into serving him over the centuries. Soldiers and spies, smiths and craftsmen. Healers and chandlers, clothiers and cordwainers. CEOs and stock traders.

But Nephrite didn't know what Naru was, not anymore. What did he need her for now? What made some essential part of him _need_ her? Nephrite shook his head to dispel his wild thoughts. It would come to him eventually.

Then her hand shifted and his eyes widened, betraying his surprise. "Naru, your hands!" Her skin was smooth and unbroken, not even bruised, and even the rope burns that had been around her wrists were gone. "How did you heal so quickly?"

Naru had gained some kind of healing capability while he'd been temporarily robbed of his own. The irony of it was completely unfair, even if it was good that she finally had some kind of relief against being monster bait.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything, except I think something happened last night. I mean, to me. Obviously something happened last night to you."

"Then you don't know where your sudden strength came from either?" he asked.

Naru shook her head. "No. But I think I heard a voice, someone asking if I was ready to be strong. And then I was able to fight back and save you."

"A voice? Did you recognize it?"

"No, although it was definitely a woman. Could it have been someone from – you know, where you work?"

But that was a dead end. What youma could or would whisper in a girl's ear and then grant her special abilities? Well - actually, that was exactly what Nephrite's youma did to their victims.

Now that he thought of it, and since he was physically touching her, if Nephrite concentrated he thought he could feel _something_. Not exactly his own spell craft, which forced a human faster than normal to their point of destiny and propped up their lifeforce for sacrifice. But something – no, the more he focused the less Nephrite could make out. He was fatigued enough that it might be something his tired mind was just making up. In any case, he could tell Naru wasn't brainwashed or spiritually poisoned.

"I heard a voice as well," he recalled. Offering information that seemed important or personal was usually a good way to establish trust between himself and someone Nephrite wanted loyal to him; he'd learned that long ago. He only remembered the technique after musing out loud to Naru. "But it sounded just like you, calling for help. It was barely a minute between hearing it and teleporting to your room, but you had already been taken."

"You heard me?" Naru's voice was a shaky whisper. "I _did_ call out for you Nephrite, when those monsters first grabbed me. It seems stupid now; there's no way you could have heard me. I guess I was doing it out of instinct. But then how did you hear me from so far away?"

"I don't know, which means we shouldn't assume it will happen again. I'll secure another way for you to be able to contact me whenever you need." He should still have a few communication crystals in storage somewhere – if nothing else, he would get her a mobile phone although they were nowhere near as small and discrete as a message crystal.

Nephrite flexed the hand holding Naru's, and took a moment to close his eyes and rest back against the hospital bed. He drew in a deep breath, exhaling through his nose. Everything was still tiring, even just talking. At least for now they were both safe. The stars knew everything, but they rarely told everything. They had pointed Nephrite to an ordinary girl, and the strong connection between them. Why? Even for a practitioner of magic, it was a mystery to him.

"Nephrite... why did you save me?"

He opened his eyes and looked right past her to the opposite wall. This again. "I told you, I don't know," was his flat reply. "Everything I told you has been a lie, Naru. Stop asking me questions. You'll never hear the truth."

She wished they had chairs in this place, so she could sit beside him in his hospital bed. Nephrite was straightforward enough when they talked about fighting or magic. But when it came to his feelings he wasn't just closed off, it was like he was in denial.

Maybe it was the setting. A hospital was such a cold, sterile place. Lacking in good human emotion, not so different from how it seemed to be lacking in other human beings in general. There was a wrongness to it that she was deliberately ignoring to focus on Nephrite. Their last talk had been so much more organic... open... romantic, even. At least until he'd been stabbed all the way through his entire torso.

Something had changed for her. Last night it didn't matter that he couldn't tell her the truth, because Naru already knew it. That had been enough for her. But then they sat together under a canopy of tree branches and stars, and they talked, and it was like meeting each other again for the first time, and _then_ _he almost died in her arms_.

She wanted to hear it now. She wanted that comfort, that... strength of confirmation. It looked like she'd have to help Nephrite get there.

But, his safety came first. And even though Naru wasn't religious – his soul, too.

"Are you going to leave your evil organization behind now?" she asked. Even before they tried to murder him, Naru had listened to his hints about what kind of a place this Dark Kingdom was, and what kind of people dwelled within it. "It's obviously not safe."

At his silence, she went on. "I know you've been involved with them for a long time, and been forced to do bad things, but maybe the time is right for you to leave it all behind. Can't you just... not go back to this Dark Kingdom? They obviously don't care about you. And I know you're not evil, Nephrite. I see how good and kind and noble you really are."

She tightened her grip on his hand for a second, remembering the razor-sharp thorns that had been meant for _her_ burst through Nephrite instead with a spray of blood.

"And everyone else would see it too if you lived a normal life. I think you could do it if you tried; live a good life. Maybe even..." she took a quick, brave breath, "a life with me?"

"You're just like those Sailor Soldiers," he muttered. Good and kind; Nephrite didn't think he'd even been so uncomfortable at praise directed at him. As if being good and kind was easy. Good and kind weren't how he had survived for so long.

"But you—"

"I don't _know_ any other kind of life!" he snapped. As if he hadn't ever brooded over why he couldn't remember anything from his childhood, or even his adolescence, _anything_ from before he served Queen Beryl. As if he hadn't wondered about the mystery of his own mind once or twice _every_ _century_ while he'd been stuck in the Dark Kingdom, wasting decades on the smallest fragments on the memory of a memory. As if he hadn't pushed his divination powers to their limits multiple times with nothing to show for it except passing out and injuring himself from magical exhaustion. As if it hadn't aggravated him enough to earn a reputation for possessing a wild temper, because he'd never get an answer. As if knowing would have made a difference for him anyway, while he was stuck living in a shadowy hell.

He recoiled in a breath when he finally noticed Naru's downcast face – he'd never been openly angry with her before. Not since he thought she was Sailor Moon, toying with him in a deserted shopping mall.

Nephrite tried to explain. "I can hardly remember my life before the Dark Kingdom, Naru."

The distress behind Naru's eyes drained away. "Nothing at all?" she whispered.

"Bits and pieces. In my dreams."

"Of what?"

He'd never talked about it out loud before. "Just... green grass, brown soil, white horses. And a young man. A dark-haired young man." He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't remember."

There was a silence as they both became lost in their own thoughts. "I can't pretend to understand what you're going through," Naru started, "and I know it must be difficult. But I also know that things have to change for you."

Nephrite felt a headache building. "Naru—"

"So why don't I help you with that?" she said.

His eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

"If I can show you a bit more of a normal life, a good life, do you think you could try to lead one?"

Nephrite just stared at her. How could he make this girl understand? There was no point. The Dark Kingdom was going to win. They were always going to escape from their sealed off banishment. They were always going to finish what they started a thousand years ago on the moon.

No, he realized – Naru probably _would _understand, eventually. And she'd fight for him anyway.

It made him want to fight for her in return. To do that, he needed to recover his strength. But that couldn't happen in a human hospital, even with the doctors and their miraculous devices.

"If you really want to help me, there's something else I have to do first."

"What's that?"

"I need to get out of here," said Nephrite. At Naru's confusion, he explained further. "My base – the dimensional space around the mansion – it's the safest place for me right now. It's warded, unlike this hospital, so no youma can get in. I think I might even have some healing spells written down somewhere... It'll be easier to recover there."

So, it would have been safer to go to his base last night after all. Naru shook her head to clear her regret and shame. It wasn't helpful now. "What do you need me to do?"

"Call a cab; make sure it's not under either of our names. Then—" Nephrite grimaced. He had to take a moment. "Then I'll need your help getting downstairs. And probably getting into the taxi."

His beautiful Ferrari had likely been towed by now, but even if it hadn't, the focus for now was to remain incognito. A common taxi car was better than a bright red sports car. He'd tap or put a hand on the driver's shoulder at the opportune moment, offering a random question or comment right at the junction between reality and his dark dimension. No such mechanism was needed for anyone leaving the space, and it meant Nephrite could be dropped off right at the doorstop without needing to walk up the entire path. If they could do that without detection from the Dark Kingdom, there was no reason to think Zoisite would make one of his surprise visits.

She nodded, and gave his hand a squeeze. "Okay. I'll be right back."

Nephrite felt himself make a little half-smile at Naru as she walked out of the room. A human, reassuring _him_. How quaint. But he had to admit, just to himself, that it was strangely effective.

He closed his eyes again. For the first time since waking up after surgery, it seemed like things might work out according to plan. Even if that plan was just to play it safe and out of sight, and return to his customary, Kingly health. Nephrite was ready to fall asleep after that entire conversation with Naru. What a strange acceptance - when was the last time he'd fallen asleep in someone else's presence? Never, clearly, since he was still alive.

A pair of light, feminine footsteps stepped into his room and came to his side.

"How long until it gets here?" he asked, meaning the taxi. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to take the effort of opening them.

That was a mistake.

A hand slammed into his trachea, pinning him to the bed by his neck.

The youma leered down at him. Josi was one of the interchangeable secretaries of Sanjouin Enterprises, slightly less forgettable than the others because she was one of his youma plants there. Her human form had fluffy, dirty-blond hair and she was dressed in a plain skirt and blouse, with loafers instead of heels. And on her face was a gleefully murderous expression. The human glamour faded around her eyes first, as they grew in size and dilated while Nephrite began choking to death under her unrelenting hold. His attempts to push her off with his one working arm, and both legs under the layers of a sheet and blanket, were the meager thrashes of wounded prey flailing against the inevitable.

"Hello, your highness. What's the human phrase? Oh, yes–"

Beyond the small black dots suddenly crowding Nephrite's vision, she smiled: an open maw with too many rows of cracked, serrated teeth.

_"Long live the king."_

* * *

to be continued...

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

a) Some of the reviews for the last chapter mentioned all the new characters. But other than Chizuru, guess what – none of them are OCs! India Cohen was the slayer right before Buffy Summers.

And she was called in 1992, while she was living in Tokyo, Japan. _Coincidence?!_

There are other coincidences too, like with the Heian era slayer and her friend, but I'm not going to spoil that just yet. Read Tales of the Slayer if you want a hint of what's to come. :)

b) "Green grass, brown soil, white horses... and a dark-haired young man." And there we have it folks! Surprisingly, while it was never made explicit in the original 90s Toei animation anime, the DiC dub of all things gave the Negaverse Generals a backstory of being Prince Endymion's friends and guards who were kidnapped and brainwashed by Queen Beryl. That's right; I spent actual money on Sailor Moon: Friends & Foes and other DiC novelizations, so you, dear reader, didn't have to.  
The language from this chapter, specifically when Naru and Nephrite delve into his memories and her wanting him to leave the Dark Kingdom, is taken from Lianne Sentar's novelization, Sailor Moon: Diamond's Not Forever. I have changed quite a bit, but Nephlite's backstory and Molly's impetus are mostly the same here.

c) And now we're getting into the backstory of the Shitenno! To head off any controversy – I have rhyme and reason to writing Nephrite as not being Asian. All the girls reborn as humans on Earth are Japanese and so is Mamoru. The Shitenno, however, were not reborn. They are their original selves from the Silver Millennium, and have been stuck in the Dark Kingdom since it was destroyed a thousand years ago.

My backstory for the Kingdom of Earth (which I hope to get into, if not for this story then maybe in a separate prequel-ish fanfic) includes a lot of geographic and cultural diversity with the greater magical court and guardians for Prince Endymion (and how many he actually had), which will expand on the traditional Shitenno myth. Something that actually helps my fanon is original manga canon; Naoko Takeuchi describes Kunzite as looking like "an Arabian prince."


	6. You've Never Heard the Monster Mash

* Warning for violence in this chapter that some may consider borderline rated R/M, and some strong language.

* * *

Chapter 5: You've Never Actually Heard The Monster Mash

* * *

A long time ago (when we were young), in a universe far, far away (the 1990s), there was a girl who fought monsters, and she had to do it alone.

Although, that's not exactly the full story. Maybe it should be: teens are the center of their own universes, and teenage girls all have their own demons to fight.

Sometimes the monster is a mental one, like the fixed dread of your own inevitable and violent death, date and time unknown but creeping closer every sunset to steal whatever life you have left.

Sometimes it's an emotional one, a grief hot and strong like a lightning bolt without an outlet, nothing to do but quietly wait out the agony until it wanes to nothing more than static electricity.

And sometimes the monster really is an actual physical being, like a two-meter tall creature attacking and hurting innocent people with crazy weaponized toy cranes, as haphazardly as its human counterpart hurt a young girl's heart.

The fight doesn't ever stop. But it is starting to change.

* * *

The first rainbow crystal carrier was nothing more than a mundane human man. A boy, really. The resonant process of magically opening his body to take the rainbow crystal was clearly painful, going by all the screaming.

He almost got away after their little encounter at the café, and if Zoisite wasn't such an excellent tracker it could have been hours before he found the boy again. But now it looked like he'd be able to finish the job and return to the Dark Kingdom – to Kunzite - long before dusk fell.

Then again, even as pathetic as humans were, there was something to be said for watching the sunset from an Earthly vantage point. Somewhere high up and delightfully chilly, that would require sharing a broad, heavy cape.

While the screaming went on, Zoisite mused that he didn't remember anything about the Seven Great Monsters, as Queen Beryl had called them. He was curious to see what the first one would be like after awakening it, as a side effect of his main mission, which was to retrieve the first rainbow crystal hidden in the monster's human form. How would it compare with the finest warrior youma of the Dark Kingdom? Would it want to rejoin the Dark Kingdom in its glorious mission right away? Would it be corrupted from being dormant a thousand years and trapped in human form? Or would the Sailor Soldiers somehow manage to kill it, like they had done to so many youma before? Hopefully it would have the same level of intelligence as a youma. Zoisite had only just gotten rid of a longstanding rival and placed himself as foremost among Beryl's agents. He didn't need any new trouble.

There – front and center in the black hole Zoisite had twisted open in the boy's chest. The first rainbow crystal had a brilliant red shade. The bright, bloody color and position of it made Zoisite think of pulling a heart out from behind a ribcage. But this was a far neater process; more like plucking a full rose bloom off the vine.

"Stop that, you're hurting him!"

Zoisite grimaced – it was that same brunette girl from hardly half an hour earlier. The one who had somehow managed to land a blow on his face, the _bitch_. How did she even find him again? They were in some random public walkway no different than the dozens of other pedestrian spaces and parking lots in Tokyo. Zoisite had been forced to stop his first attempt at crystal extraction thanks to her, and now she was delaying his mission _again_?

No.

No, no, _no_. After all he had finally accomplished, now he was considering letting some teenage girl stop him? Jadeite and Nephrite were recreant failures but _not _him_._

"Still bullying people weaker than yourself? I'll take you on mys-AHHHHHHH!"

Zoisite sent out a blast of his signature sakura blossoms from his right hand. Each blushing petal could be as soft as the delicate stroke of a fingertip, or as hard and sharp as diamond-tipped _hira-shuriken_. They mutated depending on the situation and his mood, and for now, Zoisite just wanted her _out of the way_. His blossom blast was mostly wind, and it sent the girl back head over heels. She hit one of the concrete bollards on the way down, and a random black cat padded around her body as she struggled to get back up.

And then he collapsed to a knee. With his left hand, Zoisite continued to hold the Dark Crystal aloft, using its resonating magical waves to pull on the colorful rainbow crystal stuck inside the human boy, almost like a magnet. But it was a precarious and strenuous task.

There was a reason Zoisite wanted to attack his target while the boy was alone; it had less to do with him not wanting to engage with measly humans in fight he'd surely win, and more with the intense concentration and strength needed to perform such an important magical ritual.

The crystal wobbled forward, not completely phased with the physical dimension at first. Then floated in a straight line to Zoisite's waiting hand, where it pulsed with a neon glow in his grasp. Yes!

"Hold it right there!"

Zoisite turned to the infamous Sailor Moon, smirking. "You're too late, Sailor Moon!"

"I don't know who you are, but I won't let you get away with attacking innocent girls and the terrible mean stupid irresponsible jerkface boys they have a crush on!"

Zoisite stared at the first and _absolute_ _most ridiculous_ of the Sailor Soldiers, the smirk stuck on his face while he fought off an exasperated tic in one eye.

The boy was still alive, gasping for breath in a growing halo of red light. It wouldn't be long before his true self emerged.

"I suppose if you're going to be upset over your own failure to retrieve the first rainbow crystal, you should at least know who bested you. I am Zoisite, one of the Dark Kingdom's Four Kings of Heaven!"

"Rainbow crystal?" Sailor Moon repeated, confused. Then she narrowed her eyes and threw out an open palm. "You hand that over right now!"

"Oh, this little thing?" Zoisite held up the red rainbow crystal between his thumb and first two fingers, catching the afternoon sunlight and filtering it out in rays of deep red.

She leapt for it with all the grace of a brain-damaged flying squirrel, and Zoisite laughed as he nimbly floated back at each one of her attempts.

This is what Jadeite and Nephrite had lost to?

A whirlwind started to form around the boy.

"You know what I've decided? I'm not interested in seeing the first Great Monster anymore. I'll leave _you_ to deal with whatever mess it makes! _Zoi!_"

Sailor Moon shrieked as she was blown backwards. This was too easy - she couldn't even touch him! It was almost a shame the other two Sailor Soldiers weren't there; he would have liked the opportunity to show them all what a true King was capable of.

If this Great Monster ended up slaughtering her in battle, he could track it down afterwards and re-recruit it for the Dark Kingdom. And claim credit for the kills, of course. Zoisite could always find leverage in the leeway he was given. Or the opportunity in an opening - Beryl hadn't given any instructions about the Great Monsters, only that she wanted the rainbow crystals.

Beryl only cared about the legendary silver crystal: its power, its energy, to keep it all for herself. Her talk about their Great Ruler was just that, pharisaic tribute and rituals. All of them in the Dark Kingdom, each one of them only cared for one single person. Altruism was not a survival trait.

Zoisite only truly cared for one single person as well.

He laughed again, giddy on his success, and leisurely rose up in the air. All the better to look down on the pathetic Sailor Moon who dared challenge him before he would teleport away.

Until he felt a tug on his ankle that stopped him.

"What the-?"

Zoisite looked down into the bruised but defiant face of the teen girl from earlier; the _tall_ girl. Her already strong grip on him tightened.

"You're—"

Makoto Kino slapped her other hand up to lock his ankle in both of her hands.

"Not—"

She moved her feet just a little, the better to position herself securely.

"Going—"

Zoisite snarled and readied a deadlier blast, _how dare she_—

"ANYWHERE!"

The Dark Kingdom's latest agent sent out a wild sakura blossom blast seconds too late. Makoto _pulled_ and then swung him like a living baseball bat right into the ground. The arc of his magic blast caught her as it veered wide and threw her back again, but the new welts and shredded skin all over her body were worth it. She'd seen it, and even felt it – the evil man had eaten asphalt at, oh, she'd guess a cool 113km/h. Face. First.

Sailor Moon started running towards her friend – her amazing, Amazonian friend! – but stopped at the wordless scream from Zoisite, still face down on the gritty pavement. It put her own occasional screaming-into-her-pillow to shame. He finally picked himself up and started staggering towards Makoto.

"_My face_!" he seethed. He looked like he'd been sandblasted, the gravel having scraped deep into his skin. What wasn't already bleeding from cuts was red like a sunburn. The literal blow to his beauty enraged him so much it never crossed his mind that a normal human would have also broken their nose or cracked their jaw. "I'll kill you for this I thwear — thw—" Zoisite stopped and brought a hand to his mouth.

"Oh my gosh, did you _lose a tooth_?" Sailor Moon goggled.

Zoisite sent out another sakura blast, and his hatred fueled it into a deluge of razor-like hits. When Sailor Moon fell back yet again, this time she bled from dozens of tiny scrapings and her cries of pain were music in his ears. The cherry blossom blast came most naturally to him, something both beautiful and deadly, but now he was going to use one of his ice attacks on these humans. He would kill both of them, he _would_. Zoisite didn't leave survivors. He'd make Sailor Moon watch as she got an innocent civilian executed, then it would be her turn, and he would scour at their skin and their flesh until it was nothing but a bloody, red visage – red. Red.

The crystal!

Zoisite spun around. "No! Where is it?! You made me drop it!" The abuse of his magnificent face was suddenly least important in his mind. A true bone-renewing spell would have to wait, but he formed a patch of a healing spell in the meantime.

Zoisite vaulted in the air for a better view. He turned his head every which way, desperately searching for the crystal – it couldn't have gone far! – and he didn't hear a small, feline voice on the ground instructing Sailor Moon to ready her own signature attack.

He'd just had the thought to use his old friend's dark crystal to summon it when Zoisite noticed the movement of a black cat darting across the ground. Running from something? No, he realized – running _to_ the red crystal, up ahead of the animal, no longer glowing but still recognizably red.

"Oh no you don't," he hissed, and dove towards the crystal.

The whirlwind shot up around the boy like a tornado column.

If Zoisite had been a superhero, he might have flown down headfirst or with arms out in front as if he were swimming. But as a King of the Dark Kingdom he didn't really fly so much as have the ability to hover and leap tall buildings in a single bound. When he dove down, he did so feet first and landed in a crouch not far from the prize. Then he stood and held out an arm to simply blast the small Earth creature away from his red crystal.

Or he would have, if not for the three most dreaded words for a Dark Kingdom denizen: "Moon – Tiara – Action!"

"No!" Zoisite yelled. The warm yellow light seemed to surround him on all sides, and the glittering disc bearing down on him was enchanting and terrifying at the same time. A King was nothing more than a deer in headlights in the face of that lunar magic. Zoisite summoned all of his willpower, his _rage_, and he snapped out of whatever hold the magical tiara had on him at just the last second, jumping out of the way.

The cat picked up the crystal in its mouth and dashed into the nearby bushes. Unbeknownst to Zoisite, Luna dropped the crystal in a pocket dimension – and readied a certain green transformation pen in its place. The whirlwind was starting to die down, and so she started to run towards Makoto, who was bravely pushing herself back up and stumbling towards the fight yet again. She hadn't felt the symbol that had flared in green on her forehead, but Luna had seen it, confirming her earlier guess.

"You stupid cat!" Zoisite sent out blasts with both hands, one after the other, making the cat dodge and twist. Everything was going wrong! Its feline yowls of fright weren't nearly enough to placate him, even when he landed a hit. A pitiful non-fatal one, though.

Why, _why_, of all the rainbow crystals to be stolen from him, did it have to be the very first one? Beryl would be furious and worse, Kunzite would be disappointed! He started blasting away the hedge bushes in a frenzy. He'd destroy the entire area if he needed to. "Where'd you drop the rainbow crystal?! Where is it?!"

"Leave her alone! And those plants never did anything to you!"

Zoisite turned to Sailor Moon. She limped toward him, with shallow cuts on her legs that clearly still stung at every movement, but had mostly stopped bleeding.

He should fix that.

Sailor Moon screeched when Zoisite turned his attacks on her. Dodging magical attacks made for the worst workout ever. She hopped about as he made small craters in the ground and pitted benches and a rare trashcan with the force of his tiny, deadly sakura blossoms. "I didn't mean start attacking me instead!" she wailed.

One of his blasts finally caught her in the legs and she tumbled down. Zoisite let out a "Ha!" and vaulted the distance with a single, magically-powered high jump.

He didn't lift her by the throat. Even though he had the power to magically 'lighten' someone for better handling, Zoisite sometimes liked to hear whatever his targets had to beg and babble. Instead he grabbed the gold locket at her chest, his fingers digging into the red ribbon of her bow and some of the white fabric underneath, and yanked her up to his eye level. Behind him the tall girl yelled something he didn't catch, and then she was cut off. No doubt succumbing to her wounds as fragile humans were meant to do.

Sailor Moon brought a hand up to her head, probably to get at her tiara again, and Zoisite backslapped it away.

"No! Let me go!"

"If I can't deliver the rainbow crystal," he hissed, "maybe your mangled corpse will do!"

She kicked at him with both legs and shouted at him, but Zoisite just laughed and put his other hand inches away from her eyes.

They both stopped at the noise.

It wasn't a single noise, but some kind of repeating one that didn't make sense. A base, bestial sound, coupled with something metallic.

Something like the heavy breathing of a grizzly bear, huffing air through nostrils the size of a child's two fists. _Clink_. Or open-mouthed and shaking its salivating jowls. Something animalistic, meaty-wet and warm. _Clink_. Yes; it smelled of meat, still fresh with hot blood. And very close behind them.

Both Zoisite and Sailor Moon slowly turned their heads from each other to the noise, looking up and up and _up_ at something heavily armored and taller than anything to ever come out of the Dark Kingdom.

Sailor Moon went deathly pale and for the first time ever couldn't make a sound, while Zoisite tensed and used a Dark Kingdom epithet that Kunzite had once _disciplined_ youma for using in his presence.

The monster's dense forearm, moving much faster than something of its size should have been able to, sent them both flying with a solid hit.

And _then_ it roared, sending the birds from the trees, the invertebrates from the earth, and the safety glass from every car, storefront, and traffic light in a shattering five-block radius.

The first Great Monster had awoken.

* * *

A girl was about to finish this fight.

India Cohen stalked through the halls wielding a consecrated _chokutō_. She listened and watched for the tiniest of hints. She wore old tennis sneakers, having ditched her good school shoes in Kit's van along with her blazer. New sneakers would squeak, but her old ones made no sound.

It was a kind of ghost called an _onryō_ according to Kit, not a demon after all. Anytime India made contact with it using the _chokutō_ it seemed to hurt the ghost. And each time she managed to hack off some of the _onryō's_ long black hair from her head, that weakened it. At least in the sense that it made the _onryō_ more physical and less ectoplasmic. India was getting tired of having medical equipment telekinetically thrown at her, the rapid blinking lights trying their best to give her a seizure or at least a headache.

But the worst was when the _onryō_ actually made an abrupt appearance. Croaking and floating and using her hair like thread to _sew up the walls_. She blocked out the light from the windows, the air from the vents, plugging up light sockets and phone jacks, all with her otherworldly hair. Sometimes entire walls appeared and disappeared. The ghost had probably infected the hidden infrastructure of the whole building like jellyfish tentacles. It wasn't the goriest thing India had ever dealt with, but it was definitely the creepiest so far. And she'd gotten lost and trapped in sudden dead ends and closed up rooms more than once, at least before kicking her way out through a wall. Her knee-high socks were itchy with plaster dust.

She'd chased the weirdo ghost from the basement to the ground floor and on up, fighting and wearing it down on each level. Guess nobody told this ghost about horror movie rules; never run upstairs to escape.

At first India had tried slashing at everything with the ancient Japanese sword, like it was a well-made and freshly sharpened _katana_. That worked fine on flying clipboards and file holders. But she wasn't trained at all in east Asian weapons, and one hit to the face with a Commodore 64 made it clear she needed to change tactics. (The _chokutō _had cut just deep enough into the plastic casing and electronic innards that she didn't slice her own face when it all came back at her.) After that she used one of those hard-plastic, stackable office chairs as a shield, at least until it too was telekinetically ripped away and thrown right back at her.

It was like a very painful game of dodgeball, where kicks and punches to the ball were allowed. India longed for computer technology that was small and easily breakable.

Three scratches sounded from the small walkie-talkie India had clipped to her skirt waistband. It was the signal from Kit, asking in code from his basement location if she was still there and okay. Still holding the _chokutō_, she used her other hand to reach down and blip three scratches back, letting him know yes, but the _onryō_ is still around otherwise she'd answer by talking.

She heard footsteps ahead. That didn't make sense; the _onryō _floated, and India was the only person in the hospital.

The lights flickered, again. Just around the corner an unknown staggered forward on what sounded like four uneven legs. Was the _onryō_ weakened enough to crawl, or had it manifested something equally nasty?

A girl waited in the dark.

The footsteps came right to the corner. India briefly wished for a second weapon, even though she had agreed with Kit earlier: against a telekinetic ghost any weapon could easily be turned back against her, so it was safer with just the one. Just as the unknown was about to turn, and in between the flickers of light, India curved her arm and threw the whole _chokutō_ at what she hoped was the middle of its torso or head –

* * *

This was all wrong!

Naru felt it in every step she took away from Nephrite's room. But it made no _sense_, and she had her instructions from him. She kept hurrying from room to room looking for a phone. There was one on the wall, far around the corner from the hallway she started on. But it was all for nothing, because Naru couldn't figure out how to reach outside of the building.

Dialing 100 didn't reach the NTT operator like normal; dialing 104 didn't get a result either. She even tried her own home phone number, with a 1 and then 9 in front. But all Naru got was a continuous dial tone. It was nothing but dial tones with nobody on the other end.

Then Naru heard a voice, not from the phone at all. A frightening, _familiar_ cackle, right before a cacophony of medical alarms all sounded at once.

So many times before, she'd never even gotten to the fight or flight response. Naru would be at a new store, at a new gym that let in teenagers, outside at an event or just on the street, and she would suddenly realize she felt utterly exhausted. Then both the area and maybe an otherwise normal looking person would start to warp and transform. Even if she could still move – and sometimes it would be too late for that, too – Naru could only reach a state of fear before something drained the very consciousness out of her. There was just never any point in trying to fight back.

This time she didn't freeze in place, or desperately wish she could move only to run away. Nephrite was in danger – something rushed through her body, something adrenal and _excited_ for once. Something primal that merged with the instinct to protect him.

Naru tossed the phone and raced back to Nephrite.

The ceiling lights flickered behind her and the faint dial tone abruptly cut off.

The scene of Nephrite's small, private hospital room had filled Naru with such happiness only a little while ago. But he wasn't alone anymore, and he wasn't safe anymore. The machines crowded at the back wall in line with Nephrite's head - the only other things in the room beside a sink and some cupboards – each rang with their own individual and dysphonic alarms. A youma loomed over Nephrite, standing at his right side where he couldn't lift his arm, and using an ironclad hold to crush his airway. It was killing him right before her eyes.

And it took her back to when that first youma had almost killed Naru in her mother's jewelry shop just months ago, when supernatural evil first entered her life. The memory of that other monster's squeezing grip made a phantom ache around her neck, but it didn't take her voice.

"Get away from him!" she yelled. Actually _yelled_ at the monster, like she was Sailor Moon.

But then, seconds later, she was vocalizing a low and frightened mantra of, "_No-no-no, oh no—_"

Because in response to Naru's righteous declaration the youma did the _thing_, the thing that had featured in her nightmares for _weeks_ after the jewelry shop attack, the _thing_ with its _head_ that not even a corpse should be able to do. Its body stayed perfectly still while the neck rotated, its leathery skin folding over and over on itself, far past the point a human neck would have stopped, would have snapped, and it_ looked at her_.

Naru clutched the doorframe until her knuckles were white and the wood started to splinter apart. The youma had a stretched goblin face, with large pointed ears and a flattened nose, a spiky shape on its forehead that could have been anything from a birthmark to a burnmark, and a mouth that grinned far too wide. But the worst were the huge black eyes – they looked into Naru's and never blinked, like dark bottomless pits, windows to the twisted remnant of a soul that stared right back at her.

"Hello there, little human thing," the monster greeted. It never stopped smiling.

And then it let go of Nephrite. The youma threw out an arm to Naru instead. It stretched its arm out like a rotting tree branch, lengthening in fast-forward time to catch her - but it had to release Nephrite first in order to do so.

It was different than that first youma's grip. Or the plant youma's arm that had almost killed Nephrite. Or any of the other youma that had caught and shoved and drained Naru over the past year. This time the monster's attack was, honestly, kind of slow in comparison. Naru could _see_ it coming, and there was enough time for her to dodge under it and rush forward.

Josi, the youma, was surprised that a human could duck her attack, especially a normal one that wasn't even a Sailor Soldier. But she barely had time to consider the thought because the girl rammed her with both hands to the chest and sent her straight back into the wall with a single shove. A mere human cracked a youma-sized dent into the hospital drywall and took down the cardiac monitor in one strike.

Her monstrous arm retracted by itself, in equal time to Josi's growing anger – the _nerve_ of that girl! She hadn't done the youma any real damage, of course. As if she could actually knock Josi out.

And if she killed both the traitor and human, no one would ever find out a human had so easily managed to knock the _wind_ out of her.

Meanwhile, Nephrite coughed and wheezed, gulping in air even though it felt like swallowing knives. He leaned far over the left rail of the hospital bed, trying to gain even a little bit of distance away from his latest attacker. The weight of his body made it tilt _up_ on the right side, and the rubber wheels squeaked and lifted _up_, going further _up_ and _up_ until finally the bedframe sloped past its critical tipping point and went airborne for just a moment. Then, almost 300 pounds of industrial metal and dense medical-grade plastic promptly crashed to the ground with a catastrophic **BANG**. Less audible was the _thump_ of Nephrite's battered self along with it.

The hefty bedframe thankfully landed on its side – if it had completely turned over Nephrite probably would've been trapped underneath it. He groaned at the newest hit to leave bruises on him, the bars of the rails having knocked all his ribs in perpendicular fashion. But he finally kicked off all his blankets, kicked away the standard pillow and the long, flat cushion that had gone under his prone body, and crawled away on his single hand and knees. He only made it to the plain wall across from Josi, but on the ground was still better than literally under her thumb and stuck in the humans' rectangle contraption.

Naru cried out his name. She sprinted around to reach him, her patent black Mary-Janes tapping fast on the linoleum tiles, and knelt down by his side. The medical bed bisected the stark hospital room, with her and Nephrite crouched at the wall on one side of it, and Josi shaking off drywall dust up on the other side.

And directly in line with the hospital bedframe was the door, the only way out of the window-less room, an equally distant length away from all of them. Naru and Nephrite would never make it out before the youma caught up and grabbed them, at least not together.

Nephrite grabbed Naru's shoulder, and she went to help him stand up, but instead he put his face to the side of her head and she froze in place.

"Please run," he rasped in her ear. His breath was sleep-sour and warm on the skin of her neck.

"A lucky shot!" sneered Josi. She came over to the stocky bedframe, tipped over on its side. Josi raised a single foot to step on the railing, just resting a sharp elbow on her propped-up knee instead of climbing over right away. She surveyed the two of them, a smile still on her mouth but gone from her eyes. "Your pet human has some fight in her, Nephrite. This ought to be fun."

Nephrite used his teeth to rip out the needle of the IV line in his left hand, and bit down on the plastic end to keep himself from crying out. The tiny, concentrated sting of it hurt just as much as crashing down with the bulky bedframe had. A few drops of blood spattered out over his skin.

"You think you can succeed where three of Zoisite's assassins failed?" he sneered back at her, stalling. His voice was still hoarse. He knocked over the IV stand with his left hand and the metal _clang_ of it rang through the room.

"I think I'm tired of being one of your kept flunkies and waiting for it to pay off. Time to try my chances on a King of a different direction."

Nephrite started unscrewing the top loupe of the IV stand, one-handed. Naru stared at the small drops of green blood on the back of his hand.

How could this happen again?

It wasn't fair! Nephrite didn't deserve to keep getting attacked like this, and for that matter neither did she! But what could Naru do? What could she _possibly_ do?

Well, there was always one thing. Naru jumped to her feet, standing in front of Nephrite, and threw her arms out wide. The crisp white fabric of her school uniform blouse fluttered once in place with the motion. "Stay back!" she ordered Josi. "I won't let you hurt him!"

Behind her, Nephrite worked on unscrewing the bottom platform attachment of the IV stand.

Josi took a moment to study her sharp nails. They were more like talons than human fingernails. "Is that a human I hear trying to order _me_ around? How annoying and stupid. You'll turn to begging me for mercy soon enough."

Naru felt herself shaking, just a little. She kept her arms out.

The youma then looked her in the eye, and Naru wanted to skitter back at those black hollows watching her. "Don't believe me? Humans like to think they're special, but you're not. I'll just have to prove it to you."

Josi lengthened out one of her disgusting stretch-arms to Naru's face. She uncurled a too-long finger, and slowly dragged the flat back of her thick, pointed talon across Naru's cheek. It felt like it took everything Naru had to stay still and not shrink back.

And then in a flash, Josi clawed a line in Naru's human skin. It was just a few centimeters long but deep enough to draw blood. She made a high-pitched noise at the pain, and had to fight off the instinct to bring a hand to her face, because she wanted to stay spread out to cover Nephrite. Oh, but it _stung_.

"Aw, did that hurt? It's just a teeny little cut, but you can't even handle that, can you. You wouldn't survive a day in the Dark Kingdom. Why don't you step aside, little girl – if you let me kill Nephrite first you can have a running start."

"Never!" stated Naru, and her voice cracked on the last syllable of the word. She would protect him with her life if necessary. She really hoped she wouldn't have to.

"Nephrite," she said, "Stay behind me and make for the door!"

In seconds, Josi's arm elongated the length of the room and slammed the door shut, hard enough to break the glass in the rectangular window. Naru couldn't help making an "Eeep!" at the noise. The youma even broke off the doorknob.

It covered the sound of the base of the IV stand finally clattering off.

A bizarre thought popped up in Naru's mind: the youma was like an evil Tsukuda stretch toy come to life. The thought wasn't at all helpful.

"So, if I want to get to the traitor, I'll have to go through you first. But I already know I'm going to slice right through you," Josi derided. "I wonder how much you'll put up with before giving up?"

Her outstretched hand made a snap in front of Naru's face, and Naru flinched and blinked.

"And if I try and go around...?"

The goblin-like limb started to curve around her, and Naru smacked it away from reaching anywhere near Nephrite.

Josi punched her in the stomach.

Naru curved right over, and it was so, so hard to keep her arms out. She trembled in place. She couldn't hear anything for a few moments. Her wide eyes stared at the floor ahead and she gasped for breath like a fish out of water. She had never been hit before in her _life_. In all her previous experiences with these monsters, they'd only wanted to drain her energy.

Her stomach felt like a weak punching bag that would eventually tear open, after a monster finally got angry enough. It wouldn't be stuffing that fell out to the floor.

When Naru could speak again she pleaded, "Why won't you just leave us alone? Just tell everyone back at the Dark Kingdom you killed us!"

The youma tilted her head.

"No."

She slapped Naru across the face, smearing red blood over freckles.

"That's enough!" Nephrite's attempt at a shout was ragged and too quiet. But the fury in his voice was clear. He'd wounded another youma for less, back in Sankaku plaza. If Sailor Moon hadn't been there to do his work for him, Nephrite would have gone ahead and killed Zoisite's pet that night. "You came to kill _me_, youma, so get on with it."

"Oh, but I'm just warming up. What do you think it will take to finally bring her down?"

Josi tightly wrapped a hand around one of Naru's ankles. She dug her nail-points through a prim white and scallop-edged cotton sock, piercing the skin underneath. Naru whimpered when she could feel her own blood start to wet and weigh down the fabric.

"You aren't even one of those Sailor Soldiers, with their unnatural powers," taunted Josi. "All you can do is bleed and die. Move aside, and I promise I'll just drain your energy instead of slicing your throat."

"No! I won't move!"

Unseen by either Naru or Josi, Nephrite grasped the metal pole on the ground next to him. He finally had a secure grip for something he'd only get once chance at – but now, how to get Naru to move out of the way without giving away his strategy?

"Naru," he started. "She's... she's right. You should give up now while you still can."

She stilled and wilted in place. "What? Nephrite..."

Naru was ashamed of how hurt and betrayed she sounded. But was she really that surprised? The only reason she was still alive was because this youma wanted to _play_. Did Nephrite think that youma would kill him first after all? Did he not want Naru to see him die? She was just prolonging the inevitable. Maybe drawing it out was dishonorable to him.

"Just go, Naru. You're no match for her."

Naru felt a tremor build in her right hand. She _knew_ all of that already, after months of being attacked and trapped and drained of energy. That wasn't the _point_. "No! I won't just leave you to face her unprotected!"

Amazing. After a thousand years Nephrite had finally found someone as stubborn as he was, and she was nothing like him.

How many times now had she defended him with no thought to her own life? "Do as I say!"

"Nephrite, please—"

She finally turned her head to look at him, dangerously not keeping Josi in her eyesight, and when Naru saw into his face and those wonderful blue eyes – she knew.

He was lying.

"Even your boyfriend doesn't want you around!" Josi laughed. "So much for true love, you idiot!"

Without thinking, Naru quickly bent down to scoop up the five-legged base of the IV stand and then threw it with all her might at the youma's face. The thing struck Josi's head with enough force to spin it 3/4ths of the way around her gristly neck.

Naru had never experienced dread before, yet she knew it was exactly what that white-hot, pressure-cooker sensation over her whole body was. _What had she done?_

Josi very slowly swiveled her head back around, her neck crackling with the same sound that stepping over dead leaves made. There was a mottled, darkening bruise over her cheekbone that hadn't been there before. The look on her face had changed too, to something cold and hard and no longer playful. Instead of running around the bedframe like Naru had, she started to just scale the thing instead, coming straight for them.

It took a few seconds for Naru to process what happened next. One moment she was upright, facing Josi as a human barrier between the youma and Nephrite, and the next she was slamming down into the linoleum. The chill of the floor made no difference to the ache in her jarred limbs.

Nephrite had kicked her legs out from under her so she would fall down.

There was a muted _twang_, and Naru pulled her head up to see the youma pinned against the far wall. A long metal pole pierced through part of her torso, and she was looking down at it with a confused expression.

Nephrite had thrown the pole of the IV stand like a spear, Naru realized. But it had landed off-center, not at the youma's head or throat or wherever her heart was, if she even had one. He had missed.

Josi started to laugh, low at first and then more and more like a stereotypically evil cartoon villain, full-bellied and with her eyes closed. "Ouch!" she said giddily. Youma innards apparently worked very differently than human ones. She grabbed the pole and started pulling herself forward and off it, laughing maniacally the entire time.

"Damn it," Nephrite muttered, and he slumped down. He hadn't had the energy to use the pole like a sword, and that was his last shot.

"I'm sorry," whispered Naru. Nephrite didn't answer, and that made it worse. She was so stupid. She made it _worse_. What was she good for, if being willing to die for him meant nothing in a real fight?

Tears blurred her vision. "I'm so sorry," she whispered again, and she couldn't look at Nephrite.

"Try..." he trailed off, truly and completely exhausted. He'd just undone all the healing he'd accomplished over his half-day in the hospital. He didn't have the energy to finish telling Naru to run for the door, because she might have enough time to get it open and escape while Josi took her time killing him. Her arms were still free – even temporarily stuck to the wall, she could grab Naru and drag her back in, wrapping limberly around her neck and killing like a massive boa constrictor. Unless Josi took the time to kill him first.

Naru wiped at her eyes, still kneeling on the floor. What could Nephrite possibly want her to try at this point? She was a failure. There was nowhere to go. Nothing she could do. No way she could help him after all.

Naru glanced over at the tipped over hospital bed. She desperately wanted to get under it, grab the rails and tip it all the way over, and hide under the covers.

But not as much as she wanted to save Nephrite.

She pushed herself up.

"I changed my mind!" Naru said loudly, stalling for time, for an idea, a distraction, anything. "I want to surrender and die super quickly after all!"

"Of course you do," said Josi. She pulled herself another couple of inches forward on the IV pole. "It's your human nature."

"No," rasped Nephrite from behind her, and Josi told him to shut up. The small top of the IV stand that he'd unscrewed was less than a meter away from Naru's feet. It wasn't a spear, but the length of it was almost like a thin dagger. Something like the barest hint of an idea half-formed in the back of Naru's mind.

"I'll help!" she said, grabbing it by the X-shaped top with its metal loops, and ran around the bed to Josi.

"I don't need your help, stupid human," said the youma, and she brought up a hand to push Naru away.

In just a few seconds, Naru grabbed the youma's wrist, pinned it to the wall, and then drove the point of the IV top right through the palm of Josi's hand until the metal rods of the X were almost flush with the wall, painfully crushing Josi's flesh underneath it.

"You _spittling bitch_!" the youma hollered, and she back-punched the human with her free arm with enough force that Naru slammed into the bedframe and still went flying over it, head over heels.

Nephrite had to turn his head to avoid getting kicked in the face, not to mention an eyeful of Naru's undergarments. What the hell was she doing? Why did she _never_ just run away?

But he would have been wide-eyed if he could see the look on Naru's face when she got up once more, single-mindedly focused on Josi, now trapped in _two_ places, and the bedframe still in the middle of it all. Naru was sore from her knees to her chin from smacking into the floor, and it felt like someone had hit a home run on her lower back with an iron bat. She stumbled forward in a painful gait.

Then she grabbed the bars of the bedframe's handrails, one in the air and one touching the floor.

Josi snarled as she tried to pry the IV top out of her hand, fully concentrating on the task and not understanding why it wasn't coming out, like something from the other side of the wall was holding it in place. Certainly not understanding that she should've pulled it straight out of the wall by all four metal end loops at once, instead of pulling on one at a time. And so, she wasn't paying attention to the human chit at all when she heard a curious, deep metallic grind of a noise, and a curt squeal of rubber. The youma had never heard anything like it before in her long life. So Josi turned her head to see, and all her violent intentions died for good.

Naru Osaka stood in the middle of the room, her thin arms stretched high and steady, and she held the entire bedframe up over her head. It was much longer and far wider than the girl herself, like an ant carrying a watermelon. The metal groaned under its own crushing weight, because it hadn't been built to rest all of its immense bulk on a tiny fulcrum. Even a youma like Josi would have struggled to lift it up and then _keep_ it up, but Naru herself stood firm and unmoving.

No, Josi realized, in the seconds she had left. The teenage girl _was_ moving, rearing back with the entire thing to strike.

"Uh oh," she said.

This hadn't been worth quitting her day job after all.

With momentum and determination and a shout, Naru slammed the blunt end of the industrial bedframe right into that evil, scary, _hateful_ _face_ – hammering all the way through thickened skin and bony cartilage to the lump of demonic brain matter behind it, and through that to the wall and the wooden support beam behind what had been Josi's head, and though _that_ into the thin wall insulation material, and finally bursting through the wall of the room next door, where it hit a file cabinet in there and stopped.

Neither she nor Nephrite spoke.

Naru's breathing was overexerted and her blood was pumping – she could especially feel it throbbing painfully in her lower back. It was a strange silence she could feel. In the stark aftermath of the fight everything was somehow a little empty.

She stepped to the side while letting go of the bedframe, and the other end of the thing crashed down a couple feet away from her with another BANG. It reverberated through the room and out the door. A few different chunks of the wall, which had been precariously holding on, fell down to join the rubble already collecting on the floor.

Even with the end of the bedframe still stuck in the wall, there was enough of a gap around it to see into the next room without difficulty.

Naru slowly turned to Nephrite, tired and battered but still alive, who simply looked up at her from where he was half-collapsed on the floor. There was a small and freshly wet green stain on his hospital gown, right over where he'd originally been skewered. She felt – what did she feel? Relief, first and foremost. She'd been able to keep Nephrite safe after all, the danger was gone. But it had taken so much. She felt a kind of mind fatigue, like her head was spiraling without thoughts and she should sit down soon.

Under the bedframe, one leg and part of a hand were still visible from where she stood. Naru thought of the Wicked Witch of the East, killed by a tornado dropping a house on her. How Dorothy was accused by the sister-witch of being responsible.

"Aren't they supposed to dissolve into dust?" she wondered out loud. Curl up into nothingness? Dissolve into vapor? They always had before.

Nephrite only grunted. He didn't feel up to explaining his theories on the pulverizing, hypnotizing power of Sailor Moon's pretty gold tiara.

A smudge of something black, like too-thick ink, seeped out from under the bedframe. Where the body was. The smell of something metallic and brackish filled the air.

Naru clapped both hands to her mouth.

After a minute, she finally unclasped her palms to speak.

"I killed her," she said, voice wavering high.

"Yes, you did," Nephrite got out, with not a little bit of wonder in his tone.

"I _killed_ her," Naru said again. "I've never – taken a _life_ – she was just – she was alive – and now she's not – and I did that. I killed her."

"It's just a youma," said Nephrite, in the same tone that youma used to describe humans.

"But she was a living person. Is... is that murder?" The rational facts of there being no Japanese laws on killing supernatural creatures, or even how she'd acted in self-defense, wouldn't break through her tumultuous thoughts. She was alive, and the other person was dead. "Am I a _murderer_?"

Nephrite narrowed his eyes. "You're a survivor," he stated, and he was glad to hear an element of command in himself despite sounding like he'd swallowed sandpaper.

Naru brought her hands to her upper arms, suddenly cold. She looked at the shadows under the bedframe. "Should we say something? What are we supposed to do?"

He drew in a steadying breath, to answer her question with a question. "What do you mean?"

"Well she's from your... territory." Naru didn't want to say _home_. "Do youma have funerals? Do you cremate them like we do? How does her family find out?" All her hate had drained away, now that this youma would never be a threat again, now that he was safe.

Nephrite was so tired. The right side of his chest throbbed in pain where some of his stitches had burst. The left side of his chest where he _hadn't_ been plant-stabbed oddly ached. The light was too bright in his eyes, the tiles too stinging-cold under his bare legs, and he just murmured out loud exactly what he was thinking. "You really are a wonderful girl, Naru. I don't understand you."

Naru drew in a few more pronounced breaths. His mind was tired and blank as he watched her gather herself together. At some point he should crawl over and take what little energy remained from the body's cellular and electrical activity. Any minute now. And while he remained against the wall, Naru set to work.

She marched over to the door, still unsteady from being hit right in her center of gravity, glass crunching under her shoes. She carefully put an arm through the rectangle window to get to the doorknob on the outside. Naru was mindful of the glass shards still around the frame, somewhat dazedly thankful that she'd worn her long-sleeved school blouse that day. The door was strangely reluctant to move, and the shards scraped at her white sleeve when she finally brute-forced it open.

"What the..." Naru looked closer at the edges of the door. It looked like black threads were coming out of it, as if it had been sewn to the wall to seal up the room.

She called Nephrite's name as a warning, but he was looking over to where the metal bedframe had punched a jagged hole through the wall. That opening was getting smaller as he watched – something fibrous was closing it up, like a wound healing itself.

With the youma threat completely gone, he finally felt the sense of wrongness Naru had been ignoring the whole time. It felt a lot like his heart dropping to his stomach. Son of a—

"You have to get out of here," he instructed her. He couldn't stand on his own, but maybe she would finally run.

"I won't leave you," said Naru. It wasn't a declaration, just a statement of fact, as if to say the _shinkansen_ trains are always on time, the sun will come up tomorrow, and I love you.

She threw the blankets and the long, thin cushion over the glass fragments still scattered about the room's threshold.

When she knelt down to help Nephrite stand, she took a moment that they probably didn't have time for to grasp his left hand. Naru thumbed over the tiny needle-prick wound, and the green drops of blood that had dried on his skin. The pressure was enough to give Nephrite real relief from the pain, if only for a moment.

He let Naru put his arm around her neck, and she put both of hers around his waist and pulled him up to stand. If he put all his weight on her, he was able to walk after all.

The dead youma and the costly destruction of the hospital room weren't Naru's concern anymore. Her only concern was safe in her arms, for now. Half-carrying Nephrite, she simply left the entire scene behind.

It only took a few minutes of wandering the halls to realize they'd stepped from a gory monster movie into a supernatural horror film. The two of them stumbled around the corridors, now re-arranged and blackened in sick overlapping hairlines, open doors slamming shut as they came close, and every corner turn hoping they wouldn't run into a new monster –

* * *

\- only for India to shriek in horror and bring a hand to her mouth as the _chokutō_ flew just over the space of two _human_ heads, both of whom only just managed to jerk down in time so the weapon would miss them.

"_Atama okashiin janai?!_" one of them loudly berated her. It was another girl, wide-eyed and in a traditional schoolgirl uniform just like India. The ubiquitous sailor _fuku_ of all junior high girls meant they were about the same age.

India and this new girl (who had the reddest, curliest hair she'd ever seen in Japan) were both wearing their long-sleeved white blouses for the cooling season. The other girl's skirt was a nice deep blue instead of India's brown-grey, and even better, it was a decent length that almost reached her knees. Because naturally a Catholic school would preach against sexuality as a sin and then make the schoolgirls wear _miniskirts_.

India put her hands up, but also peered around the pair, and then behind herself. She'd lost the element of stealth.

It had actually been the girl who had moved, ducking down low and pulling the man down with her. Pretty good reflexes, thankfully. He was obviously a patient, since he was barefoot and in a hospital gown, not to mention leaning on the much smaller girl for support as he struggled to get back up. India wondered how they knew each other.

"_Betsu no sūpā mesukōsei_?" said the man. Despite his tone of voice, he was leaning heavily on the smaller girl. One of his arms hung limp and useless by his side, to go with the shallow cut on one side of the girl's face. They'd met the _onryō_ already, then.

"What are you doing here?" India asked. There shouldn't be any people left in the building!

"What are _you_ doing here, throwing around swords like a drunk circus act," the man answered in English. "Don't you know there are dangerous supernatural creatures in this building?"

India marched past them to yank the _chokutō_ out of the wall. She took a few moments to examine it, and to wait for the burn in her cheeks to fade. She shouldn't have thrown the weapon before making sure she was aiming at an actual monster. She'd almost shish-kabob-ed a couple of regular civilians. "It's just one ghost. She can appear and disappear."

"_Anata wa Sērā Mūn de wa arimasen_?" the girl said. She sounded unsure.

"_Iya, kurīchā wa youma de wa arimasen_," he answered. He seemed to be correcting her.

A throaty, off-pitched moan came from behind all of them.

India cursed. Break time was over. "Get out of here!" she shouted at them.

"What the hell do you think we're trying to do," the man snapped, "Tango down the hallways for first prize and a free dinner? The stairwells are blocked and I know firsthand not to try escaping in an elevator."

The _onryō_ moaned even louder, the sound coming from all directions. Black hair like thin tentacles dripped out from the tiny crevices of space between the closest light fixture and the ceiling. It began wrapping itself around the light just over their heads. In seconds it was completely covered and no light could be seen from the bulb.

The next light in the hall began to dim.

The girl whispered something India didn't catch, but by the pained look on the man's face either she was gripping him very tightly or he was just as afraid. Maybe both. The two of them hobbled back to the hallway they came from, but it was already closed off by a new wall, threaded and infected with black sutures.

India held up her sword. Keeping an eye on the two people, she slowly stepped backwards while they walked forwards.

The redheaded girl suddenly screamed, her eyes looking at something behind India.

India whirled around. If she were anyone else, she'd be surprised to be looking at nothing at all. But things that lurked in the shadows had their tricks.

What's the phrase – takes one to know one?

So as India turned around, she gripped her sword and trusted her instincts, thrusting the _chokutō_ at what was _now_ behind her.

The _onryō_ shrieked in pain, the blessed sword burning where it touched malevolent, non-corporeal flesh. With jerky, in-human movements, it started wriggling back and off of the sword.

The man said something in Japanese, and he and the girl frantically ran – as much as they could – around and past the _onryō_ while it was still somewhat stuck and incapacitated.

The body of the vengeful spirit was still writhing, but its hair floated free. Thick strands of it shot out towards the innocent couple, catching the man on his lame arm and just above one of the girl's knees. It started to drag them in.

"_Yamete!_" the girl shrieked, over and over. She kicked at the biological yoke with her other foot. But the hundred individual strands of hair together were like hard rubber.

India jerked the _chokutō_ in a sweep to free it from the ghost's body, then stepped back and to the side to make a lightning-quick cut. The black hair fell away from the man and the young girl, and India further positioned herself in between them and the croaking _onryō_.

"Stay behind me and don't go far," she said, but they weren't listening. Only one of them even understood her. When the _onryō_ suddenly vanished, free from the only thing that could stop or hurt it, India paced towards the couple with her weapon still up and ready. They all moved together down the hallway. And at the first open doorway they came across, the girl practically threw the man inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

"Wait, no!" India cried.

It was too late. Black strands of hair crisscrossed the outline of the doorway, sealing it up, and spreading out to infect the wall beside it.

"Fine, just leave me to deal with it alone," India grumbled. But that was the whole point of her, wasn't it? She was the best person for the job. Destiny, fate, and providence all said so. And they said she worked alone, too.

A corridor later she made a mistake.

She nimbly dodged broken medical equipment, broken pieces of furniture, and falling ceiling squares of popcorn plaster, all of it hovering silently until each item shot out and hit a wall or the floor. With her eyes up and roving for a floating vengeful spirit, India didn't notice the thin, taut strands that were just a few centimeters above the floor. Not until they cut into the cotton of her school socks and welted her shins, and she tripped forward in a spectacular belly flop.

It would have been funny, if her head hadn't ended up right next to a floor vent. Black strands rose up and out, like they were dozens of little snakes and the _onryō_ was their snake charmer.

India only had a split second to try and heave herself up, because she _did not want to be face down on the floor_ for whatever happened next.

She managed to roll over and get her butt and elbows on the floor to push off, and that was as far as she got.

Still holding the _chokutō_ in her dominant hand, individual black hairs protruded and grew through the cracks around the tiles in the floor. They stitched in sewing-machine speed through the fabric of her sleeves around her arms, both sides of her shirt around her stomach, the brown-grey of her skirt, and up and down the cotton sides of her socks. She could even feel hair that wasn't her own winding about her scalp and plaiting her head still and fixed in place. All of it tightly pinned her torso and limbs right to the floor.

Nothing like a needle actually pierced her skin, but where the ghost hair touched her body she could feel hairline welts.

The first thing that came into view, while she was trapped in place on the floor, was thick, black hair that moved as if underwater. Next were sunken-in eyelids stitched shut. Finally a mouth that stretched, and _stretched_ against the black sutures holding its lips together while the throat behind it moaned.

India spit in its face.

Whether the _onryō_ stopped out of confusion or disgust, she never knew or cared. A moment was all India needed to heave up her arm as hard as she could, ripping out of her pinned-down cotton sleeve entirely, and she slammed her weapon into the crown of the ghost's head.

It was upside down, but it was a kill shot nonetheless. _Kanji_ characters on the blade of the _chokutō_ lit up. The _onryō_ made a tired and very human-sounding groan. The hair on its head quivered, and then – like a tree in late autumn under a strong wind – it all fell out. The strands faded out of existence as they slowly fell, never reaching India or the ground. The now bald ghost shivered and started to grow fuzzy and fade out, its limbs and face withering as it did so. It seemed like the mouth was the last to go, closed and frowning slightly beneath its stitches.

It was a little different than what she was used to; it was quiet, and unilluminating.

After a minute India realized that unlike the ghost, the hair-thread holding her down was not going to helpfully disappear on its own. Using the _chokutō_ in a way it had never been designed for, and hoping its original owner or blesser or whatever wouldn't mind, she slowly and carefully cut the rest of herself out without cutting (too much) into her clothes. She hardly felt like going home – or seeing Kit – in a ripped up, barely held-together schoolgirl uniform. Finally, she put a hand to her head to just yank it away from the floor. A little of her own hair getting pulled out shouldn't be a big deal.

"_Yeowch_!"

Bigger deal than she thought.

Sitting up, she scooted over to sit down with her back to the wall opposite of where those two people had gotten trapped, and unclipped her walkie-talkie. India breathed deep, in and out, and massaged at her head. After a few moments, she clicked it to speak.

"Hey, Kit."

"India! I suppose this means the _onryō_ is gone?"

"Gone and ghostbusted."

She didn't hear him chuckle before pressing down the button on his own walkie-talkie. "Any injuries that require the services of _staffed_ hospital, or god forbid, me if it's serious and needs care right away?"

India had a long, crusting cut under her hair and was bruised and welted all over both arms and legs. It would all be gone by tomorrow morning and her new school's first bell, as if it had never happened. If there were any justice in the world, a Watcher would also be like a sports therapist, and Kit would have to rub muscle relief cream into her limbs. And her shoulders. Then her back muscles. And then—

"Nope." If there were any justice in the world, she wouldn't be sitting by a magically-closed wall holding a thousand-year-old sword in the first place.

Her ripped-up sleeve was very floppy and uncomfortable. Somehow even more uncomfortable than her bruises.

"Excellent. Come on down so I can drive you home. We don't have to write up a report until you've gotten a well-deserved shower and supper."

"I don't suppose with everything you have packed in your trunk, there's a chainsaw in there too?"

There was a long pause. "Why?"

"Your spell didn't work. There were people still in the building. They got themselves trapped in a closet." And she didn't feel like smashing through any more creepy drywall. Why shouldn't he get physical for once? She'd like to sit there and wallow in her soreness and lost afternoon, thank you.

Kit pressed the button so fast she caught the tail end of his exclamation, "—at? I mastered _Ignis Metum_ before anyone else in class; I could cast it in my sleep. The only human in the building should be me!"

"Hey."

"Oh, well y-yes of course," he stammered, "and – and you too, as you are also human. Of a sort."

India didn't suddenly have the urge to chuck the walkie-talkie down the hall and let it break, but she wished she did. Maybe the vengeful spirit had been just as emotionally flat as she was when it was still alive, unable to really feel rage until it was dead and too late to matter.

"I've already extinguished the spell. The authorities will be arriving soon and we don't want to be around for their questions. Can you take care of it? It'll be faster if I just prepare the 'getaway car', as it were."

India sighed, her grudging acceptance of orders.

Leaving the _chokutō_ on the ground, she pushed herself up and walked the few steps across the hall to the sealed-up closet door. She gave it a few knocks and asked, "You guys okay in there?"

There was no answer. They probably couldn't hear her very well, and if the lights in there had gone dark, they might be afraid she was the _onryō_ again.

She'd probably never see them again after this, but India hoped the redheaded girl wouldn't be too traumatized. The man – who had spoken with something like a standard American accent – seemed kind of battle-hardened. Maybe he was in-the-know about magic and monsters. But his young friend had definitely been frightened. Poor girl; hopefully this would be the first and last time she got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A monster attack was no way to spend your afternoon. Every other schoolgirl was having a better afternoon than the two of them were.

What would someone like Rei Hino be up to at that moment? T.A. Girls Academy had its own cram school, but maybe Rei went to a different one. Maybe spending a few hours away from girls like Chizuru was the best learning and studying she got done all day.

Or maybe she was already at home, at that shrine she lived at. Lived near? India was just some dumb _gaijin_, she didn't know how it worked. But she could picture Rei in one of those traditional red-and-white priestess outfits, sweeping leaves and selling little charms. Not perfectly carefree, as one uncomfortable but revealing school lunch had shown, but free to worry about normal teenage things. Reading lots of manga or snacking, listening to terrible music and putting off studying as far as possible, and swooning over cute boys. From a band or a TV show or real life; boys were interchangeable like that right now.

India knew, intellectually, there were girls out there who were worse off than her. Girls who lived in third-world warzones, or who had abusive parents, or had congenital diseases. Still. They usually had hope for their futures, for a way out.

She made a fist that could easily crack concrete, and pulled back into a rooted stance.

Only one girl in all the world had India's kind of life.

* * *

The fight between the Sailor Soldiers and the First Great Monster, the vessel of the red rainbow crystal, came to an end shortly after Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars entered the fray. But not in a way any of the girls wanted.

"I'm sorry you had to miss cram school!" said Mars, puffing air as she ran at full speed.

"It's all right!" Mercury replied, simultaneously out of breath. They had each taken the bus to meet at this part of Tokyo, but still had to make their way to where the battle was. How long ago had it been since Luna called them over their communicators, frantic and injured? Ten minutes? They were lucky to have already been close by in that part of the city. "This is more important!"

She tripped on a large piece of glass that had exploded outwards from a restaurant window, but Mars grabbed her arm and pulled so she wouldn't fall over. Mars wondered, not for the first time, how her bright red heels were so stunning but also one of the most comfortable pairs of shoes she'd ever worn. Both of them kept running.

"Where are they?"

Mercury went to press an earring for her visor, but a second later it was unnecessary. The very ground they stood on vibrated from a thunderous, beastly yell up ahead.

"That doesn't sound good," said Mars. They ran towards the danger, passing innocent people fleeing in the opposite direction and away from the source of the sound.

The fight was taking place over an odd-to-define section of the city, where a park met a crosswalk and a parking lot. At the first glance of someone else in a sailor suit, Mars started her opening. "This park is supposed to be a safe retreat for friends and families! A public disturbance is not accept-AAAAAAAAUGH!"

The monster cared nothing at all for speeches and charged on all fours right at Mars. Her thoughts shrank in fear to nothing but _BEAR?! - giant! – armored! – BEAR!_ – _MOVE!_ \- and she instinctively leapt out of the way of a single colossal, clawed arm that seemed to be the same size as all of her. When it struck the ground the asphalt cracked and cratered from the blow with a resounding_ BOOM_ and a billow of industrial dust.

Tuxedo Mask dashed to her side, and helped Mars to her feet. "Are you all right?" His top hat and cape were gone and his normally gallant suit was all torn up and bloody. Besides his cane, which he held like a baton, only his white cat-eye mask remained. Apparently that was all that needed for his magic to blur the identity of his face.

Mars even didn't stop to swoon over Tuxedo Mask doting on her instead of Sailor Moon for once.

It had all happened in just a few seconds! Just a few seconds for the grizzly beast to charge from a decent distance away, to all the way over to where Mars had entered. She had barely moved in time! If not for the extra speed and agility she had in her Sailor Soldier form, she'd be a human pancake.

A bolt of green lightning descended from the sky, commanded by a new voice. "Supreme – Thunder!"

The Bear was engulfed in a bright, crackling cage of lightning strikes, which held it for an audibly painful minute.

Mercury took a step back, careful not to trip on all the broken pieces of pavement. "What kind of youma is that!"

Logically, the thing that charged at Sailor Mars wasn't that much bigger than a normal, non-magical Kodiak or polar bear. But those normal, non-magical animals were terrifying enough on their own. Every one of Mercury's senses buzzed in fear at such an animal, huge and supernatural and barely affected after being struck with _lightning_! Even her amazing brain could only process the scene in short bursts while she focused on staying alive.

Estimated 3.5 meters high. Estimated 550 kilograms heavy, _without_ the armor. Metal unknown; some kind of long, split lamellar tunic, with separate shin and forearm guards, and even a fitted helmet. All of it was an unrusted, true black color that barely reflected the waning sunlight and stood out against the Bear's light golden-brown fur.

The remnant of one of Tuxedo Mask's trademark attack flowers was stuck in one of the Bear's eyes, only partially blinded – a lucky hit. The red bloom itself had been ferociously swiped off leaving only the stem.

A broken fire hydrant over to one side gushed out water, making that area of the landscape slippery and more dangerous. Mercury observed that the sound of the rushing water had been covered by the Bear's roaring.

Closer to Mercury was a severely bent over lamppost, the lightbulb head of it having crashed into the ground. The bend wasn't sharp either, but curved as if something the size of a person had been thrown into it, although the person would have to be made of equally strong stuff to make such a dent in the metal post. The broken lamp had showered a small radius with glass fragments and orange, electric sparks, and there were dark red splotches splattered over the glass pieces and the ground. A low retaining wall to the other side and across from the lamp was pitted as if there'd been a severe hailstorm, and covered with some – cherry blossoms? That didn't make sense; it was the wrong time of year for them.

Mars stood a little straighter at the powerful lightning. "Who is that?" she yelled over the noise.

"It must be Sailor Jupiter," Mercury deduced, from the nature of her attack. She also saw that the newest Sailor Soldier had a cluster of puncture wounds on one of her biceps and a dislocated shoulder. Whenever Jupiter vocalized her attack, she used one hand to hold up the wrist of her injured arm, probably making an approximation of whatever proper hand signs she originally made to call forth her Supreme Thunder.

A familiar lunar glow began blooming at one edge of the area, trigonally spaced across from both Jupiter and Tuxedo Mask, but Mercury's mouth dropped open when she saw the sorry state of her dear friend.

"Moon – Tiara —"

Then nothing. Sailor Moon dropped her arms and swayed in place. The golden disc rotated in place in the air, and the other girls could see it start to slow down and become a tiara again.

For once, they couldn't blame her battle performance on being sleepy or lazy or timid. Sailor Moon had some superficial gashes, the kind that bled more than they truly wounded, but she also had five deep gouges across the white torso of her uniform. There was a still-purpling bruise that started at one of her cheekbones, swelled over her eye, and went into her hairline.

Tuxedo Mask cried out her name and started to run towards her.

"_Sailor Moon, now_!" yelled Jupiter. She ran in front of the Bear, trying to catch its attention, but it turned towards the easier prey of love and justice.

"Fire – Soul!"

Sailor Mars entered the fight. Her blistering attack surrounded the Bear, stopping it in its tracks. It roared again in pain and the momentary loss of sight and smell, but when the flames died down they all saw its smoking fur was unburnt. Only the bits of plant material and dirt on its body had caught fire.

Tuxedo Mask reached Sailor Moon, and held her in his arms so she could lean on him. The extra few seconds were enough for her to catch her breath. "Moon – Tiara – _Stardust_!"

A pressure against the side of Mercury's boot made her jump, but it was only Luna. She picked up the cat, who winced in her hands and slowly climbed to Mercury's shoulder. Then the blue-haired Sailor Soldier scrambled back.

From a distance she saw the attempt of a strategy – what she thought might explain how they could all possibly still be alive against such a monster. It was nothing more than a non-stop moving barrage of wide Sailor Soldier attacks, helped somewhat by Tuxedo Mask, to keep it in one area. They never stayed in one place either, but ran around the general perimeter to escape the Bear's anger: its claws and fangs and muscle.

Jupiter's and Mars's elemental attacks landed their hits, and Sailor Moon's new tiara attack sprinkled destructive power from high over the Bear like a shower of heat sparks. This Bear must be able to dodge her traditional tiara attack, unlike all the youma they'd faced before.

It was a miracle that the monster hadn't seriously hurt or killed anyone yet. One stray swipe or bite could hit a major artery; even a small nick could be deadly. The Bear would charge on all fours, mouth open and roaring, but it also swung with its paws, almost human-like.

"It's not a youma," Luna said into Mercury's ear. The little cat was still bruised and tender from Zoisite's attack. The agent of the Dark Kingdom had lingered just long enough to throw out a defensive strike on the Bear, the first attack of the fight, and then promptly disappeared. It was left to the Sailor Soldiers (and later Tuxedo Mask) to keep the monster from getting away and hurting anyone else.

"It's a human who's been transformed!" Luna continued. "I've given Sailor Moon the Moon Stick, which can heal him, but he's not going to stand still and wait for her to do it without attacking.

Luna stopped to take a shaky breath; she was still quite sore from Zoisite's attack. "We need to weaken him to slow him down, which will also make it easier for the Moon Stick to work. But I've never come across a creature so strong before!"

Mercury brought her visor up. The Bear's remaining eye was a weak spot, but even if Tuxedo Mask landed another hit and blinded it completely, that wouldn't stop it from rampaging.

It just confirmed what her teammates' injuries had already proven: this thing, unlike every youma they'd fought before, seemed to be near invulnerable. To both their magical attacks _and_ physical ones – the Bear could probably withstand an entire tank ramming into it.

But what did that mean for her friends, out there fighting it now, and losing?

"I have to do something," she said to herself.

Mercury carefully put Luna on the ground, and then stepped in as close as she dared, shifting between cracked bumper blocks. When one Sailor Soldier finished crossing in front her, she used the opening to call out her attack.

"Bubble – Spray!" She didn't bother using it for a dense fog. A bear's sense of smell was seven times greater than even a bloodhound's, so there was no point trying to obscure this Bear's vision. Instead she went for the bubbles' freezing effect. Regular bears went into hibernation, or at least torpor, so her freezing attack might be able to slow it down. And it would put a stop to the flow from the broken hydrant as well.

The temperature dropped ten, twenty, thirty degrees. Milky-colored rime ice formed over the short-circuiting lamppost and cold-killed the electric sparks. The geyser of water from the busted fire hydrant started to slow and freeze over. It made that space of their makeshift fighting arena icy and dangerous in a different way. But if it could slow down the Bear it'd be worth it. Nothing else seemed to be working.

"Wait, no!" yelled Tuxedo Mask. "Not the water!"

Mercury gasped, realizing their plan too late. Of course; they were trying to get the monster to the water and _then_ electrocute him with Jupiter's attack.

"Ah, stop! Undo! Luna, how do I unfreeze my Bubble Spray attack?" She'd never had to undo an attack before, none of them had. Only Sailor Moon had done it before, and just once - when Naru Osaka had stepped in front of Nephrite to protect him. But the tiara was a physical item, and she and Mars had more elemental attacks. Mercury couldn't exactly ask the water vapor to stop freezing – could she?

"I don't know!" Luna despaired. She'd never considered such a thing before, even after hearing about Naru's stand-up. "I don't think you can!"

Three Sailor Soldiers and one magically enhanced man in a tuxedo continued encircling the Bear, pelting it with attacks and keeping it in the general area. They tried their best to dodge giant paw swipes and the deep, cracking _snaps_ of a jaw as big as any of their heads. They were tired and frustrated and frightened.

It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped up.

The terrain near the fire hydrant was slipperier than ever. Sailor Moon attempted to run through the middle of it and found herself stuck in a running loop like a glitch from the _Sonic the Hedgehog_ video game. But it felt like something out of a nightmare, because no matter how fast she ran – and Sailor Moon _was_ a great sprinter, if nothing else – the ice under her boots kept her in one place.

"AI YI YI-AM-NOT-GOING-ANYWHERE!" she shouted for help.

"How come you always need my help!?" Mars shouted back. She aimed her attack at Sailor Moon's ankles, and then fired off another one to the Bear in rapid succession.

Sailor Moon flailed her arms at a fire too close for her liking as the ice under her boots melted to the pavement beneath. "You don't need to be so mean about it! Just what kind of teammate are you? Moon – Tiara —"

She stepped awkwardly on a chunky broken rock and crashed to the ground. Between the new wails and the way Sailor Moon clutched at her ankle, it was obvious what had happened.

The Bear gave another earth-shattering roar and pawed at the ground. Its head and body were in line with Sailor Moon, ready to charge at the girl suddenly down for the count.

There was no time for thought, only action, and Mars was physically closest. She didn't hesitate.

In the seconds it took for the Bear to charge the whole length of the walkway area to them, Mars had closed the distance to Sailor Moon first and shoved her friend away. The smallest Sailor Soldier was away and in the clear when the Bear bit down into human flesh with a deep, guttural _chomp_.

Sailor Mars screamed loud and bright. The sound rang out in the air for a moment and gurgled off when the Bear thrashed her like a dog with a toy in its mouth. Her limbs whipped back and forth in a blur and the white trunk of her sailor uniform became saturated with red blood to match her skirt.

Sailor Moon cried out her friend's name. Tuxedo Mask appeared at her side and she clutched at him, trying to hobble forward. Luna, Mercury, and Jupiter all gasped. How could they attack the Bear now? Why was this new monster so much more deadly than any youma they'd faced before? It wasn't fair!

The Bear slammed his prey on the ground and brought down a massive paw to help hold her there. Only seconds before the girl had stood strong and proud, and now she was down on the ground and terribly, terribly defeated. Everything was happening so _fast_.

"He's going to eat her!" shrieked Sailor Moon, and even with a twisted ankle Tuxedo Mask struggled to hold her back from running up to the Bear.

Everyone else, Sailor girls and felines alike, were paralyzed in place, shock rendering them unable to move. It was a nightmare, and all they could do was watch.

Mars raised a shaking forearm. Her whole body burned with pain, not just where the Bear's head was still fixed on her torso, a dozen centimeters away from her free hand.

The world didn't make sense anymore. It felt like she could hear wet fur and could taste broken gravel, and she hallucinated another Sailor Soldier with long green hair very far back and watching the whole spectacle stoically. Only the pain was real.

She only knew that she was going to die. Despite the all-consuming pain, Sailor Mars felt calm and strong – sad to leave her Grandfather, who would have to bury his daughter's daughter after first outliving his only child, and sad to leave the good friends she had _finally_ made - but determined to fulfill her duty and take this beast with her to the underworld.

She couldn't move to bring her other arm up and clasp hands for her signature attack, so this would have to be done one-handed. Behind the Bear's front fangs its back teeth were flatter, and its jaw more curved than any regular bear's – some kind of primordial ursine feature. But it worked in her favor.

Sailor Mars jammed her hand in its mouth. The flatter back-teeth scraped off a layer of skin at her knuckles, and it hurt just as much as everything else. "_Fire_—"

The Bear started to open its mouth, and its teeth made suctioning _pops_ as they came out of her body. Mars could feel her own blood coating the smooth meat of its tongue on her still-gloved wrist, like human barbeque sauce.

She'd make a barbeque, all right.

"_SOUL!_"

Every attack before then had hit the armor, the supernaturally thickened and magically resistant skin and fur, all with little success. Not this time.

A true Martian fireball exploded in the Bear's mouth. It blazed upwards and back out through its nostrils, and burned its way down the throat and esophagus, and then settled at the base of the Bear's stomach to finish searing the tender flesh on the inside of its body.

The Bear reared up and stumbled back, away from Sailor Mars, and let loose a flaming howl. The flames were clear against the darkening sky, and when the Bear dropped to the ground, it hit with such a force that all the Sailor Soldiers were buoyed into the air.

It was still thrashing about, but on its back and properly stunned. "Sailor Moon!" directed Luna. "Use the Moon Stick and shout, 'Moon - Healing - Escalation!'"

A glow the color of moonlight surrounded the Bear, reaching a dazzling bright level, until it dropped to reveal an ordinary human: Crane Game Joe. He collapsed, unconscious and completely unharmed. He wasn't marked by any burn marks from fire or lightning. Even the rose stem to the eye had just fallen away.

In the sudden quiet, it was easier to hear the little half-gasp, half-cries of Sailor Mars. The shock had already worn off for her.

All her friends staggered and limped to where she lay. Sailor Moon slipped on some blood and fell down, but she'd started crying already – quietly, not like her normal ear-piercing ones - and the latest clumsy scrape to her knees didn't register.

Then, in a surprising and very gentle display for the typical teenage ditz, she slowly laid over Mars' prone frame without putting any weight on her. It was more like a mime of a hug than the real thing, because Sailor Moon had to at least try and embrace her hot-headed friend. The strands of her two hair buns touched the ground, and became soaked in places with cold, dirty water and not a little bit of blood.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said, in between tears. "It's my fault you got hurt. Why did you do that?"

The sound of Sailor Moon crying and Sailor Mars' soft wails of pain echoed around them. There were no birds chirping or animals moving, not even a skitter of insects. They were no bystanders. The only background sound to their triumph over evil was the wind blowing through the leaves of some trees.

Mercury reached out a hand, but then pulled back. It was _her_ fault, not Sailor Moon's. Why couldn't she have been smart enough to see their plan from the beginning? It should have been Mercury that got injured, by her own hubris, and not the marvelous Mars.

It took too long for Dr. Mizuno's voice to sound off in her head: _the most_ _critical element when a patient is injured is time_.

Mercury called forward her visor, and her eyes widened at the strange information only she could see on the blue HUD. "She – she's going to live! But she has to receive treatment, quickly."

A quick scan with her visor confirmed no one was in the near vicinity, so she de-transformed to Ami Mizuno and continued: "I'm going to call for an ambulance. And I'll go with her to the hospital – again, I guess. Luna, make sure the others stay in their Sailor forms as long as possible."

"Again?" Jupiter whispered, but Ami was already running towards the nearest payphone.

Being a Sailor Soldier was nothing like she thought it would be. Not that Makoto Kino was naïve enough to think battling monsters wouldn't be dangerous, but everything she'd heard about Sailor Moon and her superhero friends seemed more like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon, with fights that ended quickly and triumphantly.

Instead, she was exhausted and dirty and hurt in ways that were shocking. Makoto had been hit before, in karate class as part of supervised training, in alleyways by would-be muggers harassing her or anyone in her presence, and even schoolyard corners by boys who thought being taller meant older and girls who thought strength was an invitation to thrown down. Usually over said boys, but sometimes over other stupid stuff too. People had definitely tried to hurt Makoto in the past. But nothing had ever tried to _kill_ her before.

She could tell that her shoulder was healing much faster than normal, and something like strong intuition had Jupiter raise her injured arm. Her shoulder popped back into place with a dulled sensation, like a tooth being drilled after being shot with copious Novocain. It wasn't painful, but it wasn't comfortable either.

As Makoto she had wanted to make friends so badly, and not be the weird giantess in her new school all over again. Now she had _three_ girls who were tied to her more deeply than any normal friendship could make, but was it worth it? She _tried_ to be feminine, she really did, but was it just her destiny to be a great fighter instead?

Tuxedo Mask was gone; he'd disappeared while Mercury de-transformed, and Jupiter would learn that was totally normal for him since he wasn't really part of their team. But it didn't feel normal – he'd fought and bled with them for the same mission, why couldn't he stick around to help with the cleanup?

She took his place in comforting Sailor Moon, eventually pulling her back so the ambulance workers could safely load Rei into the vehicle. One of them checked on Joe, who was finally coming around. There were police sirens in the distance, different from the more polite noise of the ambulance. The remaining Sailor Soldiers in uniform would have to disappear soon too. Reporting to the police wasn't exactly their _modus operandi_ – then again, the authorities had never bothered to show up before.

The ice around the fire hydrant, warmed by Mars' fire attack, finally broke from the pressure of the water underneath. It started flooding out everywhere again.

* * *

Everything was pitch-black.

Naru couldn't see a single thing, and she almost tripped over Nephrite while banging around the closet room. She touched the metal rods and grates of the shelving units, and knocked off plastic spray bottles. She made her way back to the door and yanked on the knob of the door she had slammed shut not 20 seconds ago.

"It won't open!" she shrieked, and she slapped at the walls for any kind of opening. A stray light switch didn't work, either.

Nephrite slowly and gingerly moved off of something stringy and rectangular on the floor. He rested against the wall, which was pockmarked with flakes of paint coming off. "All the grates or openings seem to be closed off by that ghost's power."

"The air is closed off?! We're trapped! We're going to suffocate!"

Well, that was a mistake to mention. "Naru, you're having a panic attack," Nephrite said.

"Of course I'm panicking, why aren't you?!"

He _was_, but only on the inside, as befitted a King of the Dark Kingdom.

Then again, this wasn't the first time he'd been close to death. Something about having Naru close by was calming, even if she herself was far from it.

"Naru..."

"This is it, we're finally going to die, I've failed us both!"

"You need to sit down and just breathe."

He heard Naru start to half-choke, half-cry. "The last time I spoke to my mother she was still angry with me! I'll never see Usagi again! I'll never graduate school! I'll never see an R18+ rated movie or drink a special daiquiri with one of those cute umbrellas! I'll never go on a date! _These monsters will never leave me alone!_"

Nephrite drew in a breath. He was about to use a tactic he didn't think he'd go back to, but it was for the best.

"Would you come give me a hug, Naru?"

Her wheezing started to slow down at the diversion. "Wha...? Nephrite, you want a...?"

"Please."

That did it. She had to stumble around to find Nephrite, but then she knelt down next to him. He put an arm around her shoulders, like when he had used Naru as a crutch to walk, but this time she lay her opposing arm across his chest and put her head by his uninjured shoulder. Nephrite pulled her in, and if she concentrated she could hear his heartbeat.

It was... not that comfortable, actually. But wonderful all the same.

"Breathe with me." It wasn't difficult for Nephrite to make loud, exaggerated breaths for Naru to emulate. He was still winded.

She tried to match her breathing to his. Naru's heart rate was skipping along for a different reason now, but her panic was subsiding.

Except they were still trapped in a room slowly losing breathable air with no light source and a vengeful spirit still out there somewhere. Also, the wound on his shoulder had reopened and the stars-powered painkiller effect granted hours earlier had worn off. Fantastic.

Nephrite tried to think of a way out. If Naru could lift more than 100 kilograms and it through a wall, could she do the same with her bare hands? But they might be at the edge of the building, and steel beams were far tougher than drywall and wood supports. If they made it into the next room, who's to say that wouldn't be just as closed up? If they escaped back to the hallway, they could run into the ghost again. Or it might just appear in the room with them anyway, and they'd hear croaking in the dark before something _got_ them. The crazy American schoolgirl was probably dead.

"If only I could still teleport," he grumbled.

Naru's mouth dropped open against the fabric of his hospital gown. Nephrite had actually mentioned the ability in their conversation earlier, but it was only now really registering in her brain. "You can _teleport_?"

If the Dark Kingdom had broken through their containment just one hundred years earlier, nobody would have understood what Nephrite meant. Their dialect used a different word than the English 'teleport' and its translations, but the concept was basically the same. Human science fiction had added to it, actually – it meant the people who could move from place to place under their own power, _and_ the use of a device or technology that could do the moving for them.

The ingenuity of it mattered little to Nephrite now. "I could before. I don't have the energy for it, now."

There was a beat, and then Naru gradually leaned back from him. His arm slipped until just his hand cupped her shoulder. If the lights worked, she would have been looking him in the eye. "I do."

"You do what?"

"I still have energy. Take it from me."

The hand on her shoulder tensed.

"That's what you do, right? I... don't remember everything from the mall in Shinjuku, but after having my energy drained so many times... that's what you did to me, isn't it?"

Nephrite found he couldn't speak.

"Well, what are you waiting for? We need to get out of here! Or – will it not be enough? I'm just one person, after all."

What _was_ he waiting for?

Countless schemes to steal it from humans, and here was Naru offering it freely. Did she think so little of herself, of her sacred lifeforce? No, he couldn't lie to himself about her that way. It was because she thought so highly of _him_.

A faint, undead groan came from outside of the room. The ghost wasn't far.

"Nephrite, you have to at least try!" she said.

What was wrong with him? He'd done it before. He'd done it to _her_ before, with amazing results that had even placated Queen Beryl.

Something thumped on the wall from outside and it made Naru jump in turn.

"Nephrite, please! Why won't you answer me? Don't you want to live through this?"

The last time he'd been at full strength, able to drain Naru's loving energy from her body to a point well before injury or even death. But now he was, in a way, starving. Once he started draining her energy he might not be able to stop. And there was something unspeakably horrific at the thought of surviving at the cost of Naru's life.

Then again, it was theoretically possible to send someone _else_ through teleportation instead of himself. If it came down to it—

Naru made a subtle gasp when he moved his hand to her neck, although to her it sounded embarrassingly loud. His fingers flexed against the tendons of her neck, dipping a little underneath the collar of her blouse. The palm of his hand went flat on her sternum, and his thumb rested in the little center hollow of her neck that she could never remember the proper name for. He felt sweaty-warm from a fever, and he could surely tell how fast her heart was racing.

"Remember to keep breathing," he told her. In the dark, she nodded once.

At first, Naru didn't feel any different. All she could sense was Nephrite's hand on her body, and the sounds of their breathing. Even the bangs and noises from outside the closet had quieted down. In the moment, this was the only thing she wanted to live for. It made her so woozy that her head dropped, like she was about to take a nap, before snapping back up with red cheeks that Nephrite couldn't see.

Her head and even her hair felt heavier than normal. Naru's whole body started to feel heavy and immovable, like a doll made out of lead. It seemed like it should be the opposite – wouldn't draining something from her make her feel lighter?

She kept quiet despite her thoughts – Naru didn't want to break his concentration.

This was taking a lot longer than normal. Usually she felt extremely fatigued right away, in body and spirit, and then listless enough that she couldn't stay conscious. Over and done with in the time it took to clap one game of _omochio tsukimasho_.

Not that Naru was complaining about helping Nephrite, she was lucky to stay so close in his presence for so long. Was he breathing harder? Was she? She needed to be as quiet and still as possible so Nephrite could focus.

The room became very cold. The heat of her body leeched out, bit by bit – first in her extremities, then her arms and legs, and up her torso. Like the circulation had been cut off, but the pins and needles sensation never came. Nephrite's hand was still hot where it touched her skin, even through her blouse, but somehow that made the cold worse. It was hard not to shiver in place.

How long had he been pressing on her – draining her? It had to have been just a few minutes, but it felt much longer.

And then she heard him laugh, low and deep.

Through the stuffed-cotton feel in her head, Naru felt him shift, cradling an arm her behind her back since she was too dizzy to sit up on her own anymore. He called her name, and she managed a, "Hm?" in response.

"Hold on just a little longer," he said. She wondered what for.

Still propping her up, Nephrite's other hand – for his right shoulder was no longer injured – made a gesture above her forehead. Light suddenly flared, like electricity was coming out of her, to gather in a sphere in his hand.

Through the buzzing light she could just barely make out the expression on Nephrite's face, the way he looked at her energy and not at Naru, and she didn't want to understand what it meant. The static sound of her own lifeforce leaving her body was too close and too loud, and it hurt her ears.

The simulacrum of a tension headache spread upwards from her ears to pound at her temples, and downwards to her mouth that she could feel in each individual tooth. Still, Nephrite kept drawing out that electric energy.

She had to hold on for as long as possible.

At some point, Nephrite finally looked in her eyes and held her gaze. Naru's tired eyelids kept blinking, wanting to shut, but now that he was looking back at her she never wanted him to stop. There were so many girls in the world, but he was only looking at her.

One of her legs kicked out in a tremor. Something like a quick jolt of the nervous system, because Naru couldn't feel her limbs anymore. What she _did_ feel was some kind of optical illusion come to life: like she was falling backwards over and over, with Nephrite hovering above so close, and she thought: why can't you kiss me instead? A reverse Prince Charming to put me to sweetest sleep?

It was her last thought before finally fainting.

Naru slumped in his arms, and Nephrite immediately stopped the draining process. He could only look at the sphere of her energy out of the corner of his eye; it was that bright and powerful. Like a star. It took him three tries to carefully fold it away in a pocket dimension. If Naru's energy from their encounter in the mall had greatly satisfied Beryl, _this_ would earn him commendation and favor beyond his wildest dreams.

Nephrite gathered his salvation in his arms. She was light as a feather to him again. Standing on his own two feet, a transfiguring shimmer went over his body, and then he was wearing his sturdy grey uniform once more. He let the glare of his teleportation grow more luminous than usual to lay bare the simple janitor's closet that had been their dark shelter.

Then, in a red radiance, they were gone.

* * *

to be continued...

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

So... my country is metaphorically and in some places literally on fire right now. Being able to plunge into the escapism of fanfic is great (I'm both reading and writing it) but if I only did that and sent "good thoughts" then I'd be part of the problem. If, like me, you are unable to go protest and march for the Black Lives Matter movement, please consider donating : . And since everyone here is a reader, let's educate ourselves : blog/2020/06/09/schomburg-center-black-liberation-reading-list .

I'm aware of how awkward it is to advocate for BLM when there are no black characters in this fic. Buffy has rightly been criticized for being racist (no main/recurring black or non-white characters even in modern day America; the first slayer and Kendra were coded as savage and killed off) and there were just no black characters in Sailor Moon at all, although you can argue that Setsuna is Ainu. Japan has it's own history with racism. I mentioned earlier than my prequel about the Earth Kingdom is naturally diverse (what else could it be, when you have representatives from all over the world at the magical capital of Earth?) but that doesn't exactly reflect on this current fic. I plan to not just insert characters for diversity, but be mindful in my writing and be more diverse where I can.

In more fannish news, whenever I got writer's block on this chapter I just skipped ahead to work on the next one, so it shouldn't take another 7 months for a chapter to be posted. :)

_"Atama okashiin janai?!"_ (The hell is wrong with you?!)  
_"Betsu no supa mesukosei?"_ (Another super schoolgirl?)  
_"Anata wa Sera Mun de wa arimasen?"_ (You are not Sailor Moon?")  
_"Iya, kuricha wa youma de wa arimasen."_ (Well no, that creature isn't a youma.")  
_"Yamete!"_ ("Get off!")

I am using Google translate and random pages on Japanese slang, so please feel free to correct my translations. And as always, I love being pestered with questions and comments!


End file.
